


in the garden of eve

by spiderintheroses



Category: DCU (Comics), Harley Quinn (Comics), Poison Ivy (Comics)
Genre: Angst and Fluff, Anything Joker/Harley is limited, Eventual Smut, F/F, Friends to Lovers, Hurt/Comfort, Mentions of past abuse, Occasionally Rivals, Partners in Crime, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-12-04
Packaged: 2021-03-04 04:15:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 10
Words: 55,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24577414
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spiderintheroses/pseuds/spiderintheroses
Summary: From the first time they meet, through all the fire and chaos, Harley and Ivy keep coming back to each other. Neither one is prepared for what that might mean.or, the development of Harley and Ivy, from deep roots to growth to blooming in the face of whatever Gotham can throw at them.
Relationships: Harley Quinn/Poison Ivy, Pamela Isley/Harleen Quinzel
Comments: 139
Kudos: 420





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> like the tags say, everything with that guy and any abuse, past or otherwise, will be limited in scope compared to the good stuff. If you're not comfortable reading it but would like to follow the story, skip past it, let me know, and I'll give you the short version in a comment!

_Left, right, left, right, pause. Wait. Breathe. Leftrightleftrightleftrightle-_

Harley Quinn scurried along through the shadows on velveteen-padded feet, keeping time with the mad tap dance cadence in her head.

_Be vewwy, vewwy quiet...I’m hunting -_

_SMASH._

The teeth of the guard around the corner gave way to the business end of her baseball bat. The heavy thud of his body dropping to the ground covered the giddy laugh that erupted out of her. It wasn’t just that he had dropped like a sack of potatoes, although that was pretty damn funny; her laughter bubbled up from the spring of breathless excitement that had been welling in her chest for days now, finally spilling its banks tonight. She couldn’t help but laugh; she practically vibrated from excitement.

Tonight, she’d see him again.

It had only been a week since Batsy dropped him off at Arkham, but for Harley, it had felt like ages. She had been planning his breakout from the moment she found out he was grabbed. The only other time she had broken out of Arkham had been with him, the first time; she had never broken in. Luckily, she had an army. The night he got busted, she had been running distractions on the other side of town with half of his crew, and every single one of them had a frequent flier card for Arkham. They knew the weak points, they knew which guards to pay off, they might as well have had keys. And she had the drive to lead them, to break him out. Any moment now, they would be making their presence known at three of four exterior walls...

On cue, Arkham Asylum _rocked_ on its foundation.

A vicious smile cracked over her face. The alarms began to blare. Time to move.

Harley ripped the guard’s keycard from his body and leaped over him in a graceful tour jete before dancing down the hallway. Her mind ran the numbers: Sixty-four Arkham guards on duty tonight - up from the usual forty-eight, they respected him at least. Eight in the guard towers, eighteen around the perimeter walls, twenty-six patrolling the interior corridors and wards, six in the main control room...

A bunch of them had probably been blown up in the explosions, and anyone who could still run was running towards the source of the noise, ignoring one pretty little clown with a bloodied baseball bat strutting down the hallway toward the most secure section of the entire place, and the last six guards waiting there. 

Fight or flight was a funny thing. In times of perceived danger, like the sound of explosions and alarms in a supermax facility for the criminally insane, one’s sympathetic nervous system kicks into overdrive, halting all unnecessary body processes, like digestion, so that resources can be diverted to the limbs and brain, in preparation for a battle for survival, or a desperate escape. However, Dr. Harley Quinn had a working theory that, when neither fight or flight was possible, the continued activation of the sympathetic nervous system had a way of acting against the body, inhibiting the very reactions it was designed to enhance.

For example, six guards locked in a room, guns at the ready, dreading the opening of the double steel doors to the mayhem outside, would likely find themselves rooted to the spot when those doors finally did open, so long as enough time passed to allow their sympathetic nervous system to go into overdrive and deaden their limbs. So she had kept her stroll leisurely, taking her sweet time between the alarm and the door.

As she moved, the tapped the bat behind her on the ground, a steady metronome counting down the seconds.

_Nine, eight, seven, six..._

She readied the two keycards she had collected along the way. The moment her internal clock hit two seconds left, she shoved the keycards into their slots; a new alarm blared, and the steel doors slid open, revealing six terrified guards.

“Goodnight, boys!”

And the lights went out.

Harley flung herself forward in the pitch blackness. By the time the guards realized what was happening and pulled the trigger on their guns, she was on the ground, the bullets were whizzing over her head, and at least two kneecaps had been smashed in. She had memorized where each of them stood, frozen, and took out two more before they had the good sense to move in the darkness. 

Three down. More gunshots. She was somewhere new in each flash of blinding light.

_“Stop firing, idiot, you’ll hit one of us!”_

She grinned and kicked out behind her, where the voice had come from. The guard crumpled to the floor with a yelp and she brought her bat down on his head, with a satisfying crunch.

The two remaining guards gave her a fight, getting in a few hopeful, flailing haymakers in the darkness, but she was lighter and faster and one of their punches opened up for four of hers. Harley finished them off even faster than she had originally planned and she stood in the darkness for several seconds, catching her breath, before the lights clicked back on.

And there it was: the last door. Her heart fluttered in her chest.

Breathless, she used their keycards to open the windowless red door. It swung wide to reveal the cell: concrete walls, a thin mattress on the floor, and a hole in the ground.

“Puddin’?” she asked, stepping inside.

A heavy fist connected with the side of her head and Harley saw stars.

She staggered and dropped to the floor, vision flickering, but the moment she heard his laugh, it no longer mattered. She reached blindly for him.

“Goodness, Harley!” he cackled, and her hands found his as he lifted her from the ground. “I assumed you were one of the guards - you understand how tense I’ve been in here? After an entire week, I was preparing to fight my own way out!”

“I’m sorry, Mr. J, I really am,” she said, folding into his arms. She breathed against him, leaning in as the world wobbled dangerously; he kept her steady. She was home.“I understand, I tried my best, we needed a plan -”

She looked up at him as her vision cleared:

“Well of course you did, Harley, the whole of you and my gang together maybe totals an IQ near triple digits. Allow me to handle things from here and perhaps we’ll extricate ourselves from the situation.”

“Of course,” she cooed up at him. He put an arm around her shoulders and together, they strode out into Arkham.

The crashes and gunfire grew louder, beneath the scream of the alarms the fighting getting closer. Harley peered anxiously down the east corridor as they passed it, going north towards the central command center. 

“Uh, Puddin’, we got an escape route all set up-”

“Harley, what did I tell you ? Allow me to handle things from here.” With a baton appropriated from the belt of a dead guard, Joker bashed open a control box. She saw the label inside: AUTOMATIC LOCK. Only as he reached for it did she realize what exactly he was handling.

“Mr. J, we got a car waiting outside, and it’s a clown car but I don’t think it’ll fit everyone.”

He stopped with his hand on the lever. From behind him, Harley watched as Joker looked down and his shoulders raised in a deep breath. She froze; it had been a joke, a terrible joke, just a little something to make him smile, to make him see that they should leave, that the escape was all planned out; she wanted him to smile, like he always did, and tell her how good she did. When his body tensed, every fleeting hope turned to fear, rooting her to the spot.

Fight or flight is a funny thing.

She was already apologizing when he turned on her, but to her relief, it was the smile she so craved.

“Harley, my sweet. You’re new to this, so listen and learn. You can’t have a prison break...” he reached behind him and shoved the lever down, “...without a few things breaking! Now, stay close to me if you don’t want to be counted among that number.”

The cacophony of chaos was right on top of them: guards shouting, explosions, gunfire, fighting, screaming, all seemingly right on the other side of the closest wall. The escape route would be blowing open any second. And then, amid the din, the heavy thunks as the doors began to open, two by two, down the length of the hallway.

The inmates stepped out into the open, all in matching orange prisoner garb, all wildly different in size and fury, and all turning to look at their king as he strutted down the aisle between them, with his princess clutched tightly to his side. Harley looked up at him adoringly, feeling the stares, loving them. Their first escape from Arkham, their first together, was the end of Harley’s first stint here - the last three months together may have been a trial run, small time jobs and secret nights together and a low profile, but tonight marked their debut to the criminal world and all of Gotham City. Let them bow.

“My friends!” Joker cried, and Harley’s hope welled up in her chest again, breath catching. “Any moment now, my loyal bruisers will burst through the nearest wall, and our path to freedom guaranteed. Run if you feel like it. But for those of you seeking post-incarceration employment, a little game: the last ten standing, including my own men, will find jobs with me. And fifty grand, each.”

The prisoners looked around. Harley remembered their files: the rivalries, enmities, alliances, betrayals. They were all entangled in one huge web; blood was imminent. She giggled.

He paused and cocked his head, listening to the sound outside the walls. Then he smiled.

“Let’s see who truly rules this jungle, shall we?”

He snapped his fingers - and two tons of brick and cement and steel blew apart in a fiery blast. The prisoners roared their approval as a hole large enough to drive a truck through appeared in the wall, ringed by fire, darkness beyond. A portal to hell - or, a portal unleashing hell on the world.

Perspective.

Whether hell was in the Asylum or outside of it, either way, it all broke loose. The guards streamed in, grappling with Joker’s men, smoke bombs arcing over their heads and landing among the inmates. The inmates launched themselves into the fray, threw themselves at each other like lions. Bodies dropped. Others flew. Harley watched Bane pull the arms off of two of Joker’s men, and shook her head. The men were useless to Joker if they were going to be so weak; they called to their boss for help, caught off guard by the hell that awaited them once they broke in, but Joker paid them no mind. He was culling the herd. 

Clayface smashed a guard into an open doorway; it took four guards to take him down, but they only brought him to his knees before Zsasz hacked his way through the guards and barreled into Clayface, bodying him into the cell and trying to slam the door shut. Bones broke, blood spattered on the walls, only to be covered by the rising clouds of smoke. The alarm screamed, and Joker laughed.

The chaos was intoxicating.

Harley had never felt closer to him. Laying a hand on his chest, she looked up at his face, reaching for a kiss. He moved his hand from around her shoulders to the back of her neck, using his free hand to point out a pair of his goons battered by a pair of Arkham guards.

“An embarrassing showing, isn’t it?” he asked her.

“They’re not worth you, Mr. J.”

“You’re right. This is an affront to my reputation.”

Without warning, he lifted Harley by the back of her neck and leaned in close to her ear. “Make me proud, Harley.”

Panic rose - she wasn’t ready -

“Wait, Puddin’, _please_ -”

He kissed her on the cheek, and threw her into the middle of it.

Harley hit her head as she landed, sliding into the wall. The world spun. She tried to blink it straight - only to dive out of the way as a guard’s body smashed against the wall where she had been just seconds before. She struggled to her feet. It was like being caught in a storm: the riot swirled around her, the sound rattling inside her skull. Six months ago, she would have bolted for safety...but fight or flight was a funny thing.

She looked back at his shadow, standing tall above the smoke.

Then she hoisted her bat over her shoulder, took aim at one of the goons she had planned this heist with, and swung for the fucking fences. He never even knew what hit him.

The sound of Puddin’s laughter behind her was all the motivation she needed to keep going. Harley was smaller than the rest of them, but she was faster, and she had something to prove, a cause more important than survival. She whipped through the riot, staying within his field of vision and swinging with abandon, the breaking of bones reverberating up her bat and through her arms. Her senses were in overdrive, like she’d been drugged: she saw everything, heard everything, smelled and tasted blood, but felt nothing. He cheered her on, shouting warnings and laughing when she ducked at the last minute.

When she didn’t duck out of the way, he laughed harder. She saw a flash of orange out of the corner of her eye and the next minute she felt her entire body rock to the side, dropping her. Something whistled overhead and he howled. “Got to be quicker, Harley dear! You can do this! Make me proud!”

She struggled to her feet and whirled for her attacker, but before she could find them, the bat was wrenched out of her hand. She turned, expecting to be hit, but instead heard a rough voice:

“Nah, wait! That’s Joker’s girl!”

The bat clattered to the floor, the attackers gone before she could find them. She bent down for the bat, only to be hit again by someone rushing past her.

Her reflexes were slowing. It was where her size let her down: she was faster, but rattled by so few hits that much larger people would have shaken off. Her eyes burned - she turned back to where she remembered Mistah J had been, looking for salvation and protection, but she couldn’t see him now, the smoke was too thick. Another body slammed into her. She dropped to her knees.

She’d let him down, she’d let him down, he wouldn’t look at her again after this...no longer the Joker’s girl, they’d kill her here...

“It’s the Bat!”

And all at once, the battle royale became a stampede.

She saw only a black shadow, more a blur than anything, coming in from above before the stun grenades went off. The inmates bolted for the breach in the wall, trying madly to escape, to evade him. Harley got to her feet but, momentarily blinded, didn’t make it far before she hit the ground again. Hulking shapes swirled around her - she was floating. Falling. She felt boots, knees, falling bodies over her. All she could do was curl tightly -

Then she saw him through the haze, standing over her. The flash of green, those eyes she loved so much. He was like a ghost, hardly even real. She reached out. A strong hand took hers.

Harley blacked out.

*

Later afternoon sunlight filtered through the window, warming her face through the threadbare curtains. For a moment, the sensation was so pleasurable that she didn’t realize her face was in pain; as soon as she smiled, the pain cracked over her face.

She groaned, and then whimpered as it pulsed again, from eye socket to jaw. She usually liked the pleasurable, hot flashes of pain that came with her new life, but this was a dull, deep throb that made it hard to move.

Her groan choked off in her throat when she heard movement outside the room. A mingling of fear and excitement coursed through her, a potent, intoxicating combination she had become accustomed to. She should not have been so loud; if she had woken him, she would feel terrible. But on the other hand, if he were coming to check on her after last night...

Harley rolled over, clocked the layout of the small bedroom. Beyond the ratty bed she was laying in, there was only a door to a bathroom, an armchair, and a single nightstand, with a rose in a slim vase. She smiled. He was so thoughtful.

At the sound of footsteps outside the door, she quickly rolled back over, with her back to the door, feigning peaceful rest. Her heart beat against her ribcage as she heard the door click open.

“She lives.”

She jolted out of bed. _That wasn’t his voice._

His voice was piercing, full of emotion, dripping with cold amusement; this voice was a warm purr - and it was a woman.

Poison Ivy leaned against the doorway, arms crossed over her chest.

Harley had only ever seen Ivy in Arkham, where she was drawn, raw, something wild and ready to kill. She still had the same danger in her dark eyes now, but freshly showered, her red hair blown out and falling around the shoulders of her simple black t-shirt and almost down to her dark leggings, there was a softness and warmth about her. Not unlike late afternoon sunlight filtering through thin curtains.

But that didn’t matter, and she didn’t dwell on it, because she wasn’t _him._

Ivy spoke first, dipping her head ever so slightly. “Doctor.”

Harley scowled. “Isley.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> first chapter wasn't too fun...lets get to the good stuff.

Ivy soured, as Harley knew she would. 

“It’s _Ivy._ ”

Harley nodded solemnly, understanding. “Pamela.”

“You fu-” But Harley dissolved into laughter that drowned out the rest of Ivy’s snarled retort as she turned on her heel and strode back out of the room. It hurt her face, but it felt good to laugh. Freeing.

Ivy returned a few minutes later, this time with two steaming mug of something in her hands. Harley had recovered herself by now, mostly because the ache in her head spread further throughout her body the more she laughed, and the pain was becoming debilitating. Besides, it was no fun to laugh if there was no one to listen to it. Still, she kept a little smirk on her face as Ivy crossed the room, offering out one of the cups, her eyes still narrowed.

“Drink this.”

Harley only acquiesced without a smartass comment because her throat was dry. Whatever hot, bitter bullshit was in the cup hardly helped, though, and she sputtered out most of her first sip.

“Jesus, ya trying to poison me or something?” Ivy raised a brow. Harley paused, replayed the words to herself, and laughed when she realized. “Not how I expected I’d go, fine. At least it’s _funny.”_

“It’s tea,” Ivy said. “This isn’t my favorite flophouse but it was the most accessible following the other night. If I had full access to a greenhouse I could have brewed something better and stronger, but this is all I have right now. Drink the rest, you’ll feel better.”

As Harley choked down the rest of the drink, Ivy settled herself into the armchair near the bed. 

“So I guess the rumors are true, then,” Ivy said. She studied her for a long moment, running her eyes over the rippling of Harley’s muscles, the bruises on her exposed skin. Harley realized she was still in her jester suit, from the breakout, so it wasn’t like Ivy could see most of the purple marks.

Harley rolled her eyes. “Whatcha talkin’ about, what rumors?”

“About you. About who you are now, Dr. Quinzel.” She sat forward, elbows on her knees, hands folded in front of her. Harley squirmed slightly. “I watched you as you fell for him. You were my psychiatrist in Arkham, and even though I had no interest in my own rehabilitation, you did, before he got his hooks into you. By the end of it even I cared more about it than you did. When they admitted you, I wasn’t surprised. One of our own. And when you two broke out together, I assumed you’d last a week before they turned up your body somewhere. I started hearing differently not long after, wanted to see for myself. See if I’d be surprised again.”

Her gaze was intense, magnetic. Harley knew all about the way Ivy liked to ensnare her victims. She was confident in her immunity because of her willpower - she only had room in her head for Mr. J, no one else, not even _herself_ \- but that didn’t lessen the strength or pull of Ivy’s stare.

She tried for tough. “Well, here I am.”

“Here you are.” If she were surprised again, she didn’t show it. She sipped her own tea. “Joker’s former girl. What was it, something dumb...Harlequin?”

“It’s Harley fucking Quinn, thank you,” she snapped. He had come up with it.

For a moment, Ivy’s eyebrows just rose - then she threw her head back and laughed. Harley’s skin burned.

“Harley fucking Quinn it is, then.”

“And I’m not his _former_ girl,” she added suddenly. “I’m still his and he’s still mine. He’ll be lookin’ for me, he’ll be worried.” Fear shot through her. “He might even be hurt! That’s why he hasn’t come knockin’ down doors for me. I have to get to him.”

Ivy’s laughter had died on her face as Harley spoke, replaced by shock and revulsion. She leaned forward, concern lined into her face, enough to still Harley as she tried to climb out of bed.

“Are you kidding? He didn’t just throw you to the wolves at Arkham, Quinn, he fucking chummed the waters and ignited the feeding frenzy before he fed you to the sharks. Why would you-”

“He was letting me prove myself in front of them,” Harley said, through gritted teeth. “If I’m gonna be his girl-“

“I thought you already were?”

“If I’m gonna _stay_ his girl, everyone needs to know not to fuck with us,” Harley continued firmly. “I gotta be strong, tough.” 

With that, she swung the blanket off of herself and lurched out of bed, only to feel the room spin beneath her. Harley pitched forward on this unsteady ground, right for the window - and Ivy was on her feet in a heartbeat, catching Harley around the waist with one strong arm. She absorbed all of Harley’s momentum into her body and for a moment they were pressed together, before Harley’s legs turned to jell-o and she went down heavy, dead weight. Ivy held her upright and, despite the force of Harley’s bullrush, gently lowered her back onto the bed. All without spilling a drop of the tea in her other hand.

“Take it easy,” she murmured. Harley’s hands came up to clutch her temples, trying to stop the world from spinning so violently. She wanted to throw up and her arms went all tingly.

“What the hell happened last night?” she said with half a laugh. “Haven’t felt like this since college jungle juice!”

“Last night?” Ivy said. “Sweetheart, it’s been almost three days since the breakout at Arkham.”

Her heart was anything but sweet, but Harley didn’t bristle at the nickname from anyone except him like she usually would; she sat up in bed, feeling like she’d been hit in the face again as cold shock flooded through her.

“Three...days? I’ve been here three days?”

Ivy nodded. “Not unconscious, I would have dropped you off at Gotham General if you’d been unconscious. Just...despondent. Awake but glassy-eyed. It was impossible to get you to eat and you barely drank. Every time I went out at night for supplies and herbs I worried...” She paused, checked Harley’s face, and course-corrected. “I wondered if you’d still be alive when I got back. You don’t remember any of that?”

“It hasn’t been three days,” Harley said, and began to laugh, suddenly manic. It turned to a coughing fit. “It was just last night that Mr. J broke us out of Arkham, I remember, he saved me when Batman showed up...I have to find him. He needs me, he shouldn’t be the one saving me.” She groaned again, pressing her hands over her face this time.

“It wasn’t him that-” Ivy released a frustrated sigh. “Quinn, he took off as soon as Batman showed up. The rest of it was all a distraction to ensure he could make it out clean. He left you - you deserve better than that.”

Harley raised her head from her hands, tears in the corners of her eyes, and clarity shined through the clouds, just for a moment. Whatever concern had lined Ivy’s face now deepened to fear, but when she leaned in, hope flashed in her eyes.

“I really don’t,” Harley said quietly. “We’re made for each other.”

Ivy’s lungs deflated in a slow breath as she sat back, eyes closed. “Fine. I don’t care, do what you want, I’m not going to stop you leaving.”

She took Harley’s empty cup and left her alone in the room to gather her wits and strength. Harley heard a TV click on in the other room; some droning news show. Then she was alone again and the TV in the other room wasn’t enough to drown out the silence, and the fear and anxiety began to creep under Harley’s skin again. She forced herself to take her time getting up this time, first levering into a sitting position, then sitting with her feet on the floor, before finally pushing off the bed.

Her legs were still weak, but at least she didn’t crash headfirst out of the window of a shabby apartment building. Maybe Ivy’s tea had helped. After another minute or so to collect herself, Harley headed for the door.

Ivy was sitting on the couch, her back to the bedroom door. Harley looked around: it was a one bedroom, one bath place, with peeling wallpaper and a poor view of the brick wall of the neighboring building. Ivy seemed far too glamorous to hang around this place, and far too proud to have slept on the couch. Harley smiled triumphantly: she knew Ivy had been lying about the three days thing.

“Do you have some place to go?” Ivy asked, without turning to look at her. Harley started to answer indignantly but Ivy cut her off. “I mean, do you even know where he is?”

Harley shut her mouth again. She hesitated. There were safe houses, clubs, hideouts...but she didn’t know in which she’d be able to find him. 

“Has there been anything on TV?” she asked quietly.

“Not that I’ve seen,” Ivy said with a shrug. “If you want to wait and see...I just picked up groceries.”

She nodded to a half dozen paper bags sitting on the linoleum counter. Harley wanted to decline, but before she could get the words out, her stomach rumbled.

An hour later, they were sitting on the couch, Ivy reclined in one corner and Harley sitting cross-legged on the opposite side, curled around a huge bowl of Spaghetti-o’s, her second of the evening. There was a strange air of uncertainty between the two women; they didn’t talk much, and neither had reached for the remote when the evening news rolled right into Wheel of Fortune. 

Now that Harley had been fed, however, she seemed to have come alive.

A new puzzle was up. Vanna White flipped a few letters, then strode off to the side, leaving C _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ T C _.

Harley looked up at it and cocked her head. “Championship Match.” Then she went back to her dinner.

Ivy scoffed, only half paying attention. Thirty seconds later, a triumphant contestant shouted out “Championship Match!” and the victory bells sounded. Ivy’s jaw fell open.

Another puzzle. 

M _ _ _ _ _ R _ N _ _ _ _ _ R _ _ _ _ _.

“Movie franchise reboot,” Harley said simply.

“Jesus,” Ivy muttered. Again, Harley was right, a full minute before any of the contestants. “What is going on inside your head?”

Harley shrugged cheerily, preoccupied with her food. When the next puzzle came up, Ivy shifted in her seat, sitting forward and focusing hard, forgoing her aloof and reserved cool. 

_ _ _ S _ _ _ _ _ D _ _ S _ S

“I bask in mud pesos.”

“That doesn’t even make sense.”

With that, Ivy was committed. She couldn’t help it. As the letters came up - V, R, F - she calculated. And then it hit her: “A vase of red roses,” she said, trying to keep it smooth while also answering as quickly as she could before Harley could steal it. The game show confirmed it a moment later.

“Typical flower genius,” Harley teased.

From there, it was on: their competition grew hot and fast and they went back and forth over the puzzles, first Harley winning, then Ivy. They found common ground in berating the moronic contestants, but otherwise, it was as fierce a rivalry as two people could have over a prime-time game show. Harley found herself smiling, and it grew even bigger when she looked over and saw that Ivy was smirking too, attention focused on the TV.

By the final puzzle, they were all tied up.

_ A _ _ N G C H _ _ _ _ P I _

They waited as the next contestant waffled over his letter choices. “F?” the man asked nervously.

Ivy shook her head. “And they wonder why I hate men.”

Harley laughed, watching Ivy now instead of the screen, studying her while she was distracted. The familiar need to toy, or push and prod, grew in her stomach. She ran her tongue over the sharp edge of her teeth, then, with a smirk tugging at the corner of her lips, looked back at the TV and smugly announced “Eating cherry pie!”

“Damn it,” Ivy hissed.

One of the contestants seemed uncertain; he guessed the letter T, only to be met with the sound of the buzzer. No “T” meant that Harley’s guess was wrong and that Ivy was back in it, and she had the answer: 

“ _Making_ cherry pie.”

The win carried Ivy over the line and the height of her celebration was a self-gratified little smile as she sat back in her seat, while Harley made a show of pouting. 

“You’re pretty sharp, Quinn,” Ivy admitted, clear that this made the victory even sweeter for her. Basking in the moment, she glanced over at Harley - just in time to catch Harley’s lips twitch in an odd smile. At this, the one on Ivy’s face melted off.

“Wait - did you let me win?”

“Of course not!” Harley said, with a grin that was not entirely convincing. Ivy glared. “Or maybe I did? You’ll never know. Or _maaaaaybe_...Maybe I just think that eating cherry pie is great and I wanted to make that known.”

Ivy stared at her for a moment before turning back to the TV and staring straight ahead, trying to recover her same cool repose.

Harley giggled. She had no idea that Poison Ivy, of all people, could blush - seeing her cheeks darken was a hell of a consolation prize.

And in that moment, she decided to stay a few days.

*

Harley and Ivy slipped into an awkward, yet stable routine.

It wasn’t exactly safe on the streets, Ivy had pointed out, not least for Joker’s New Girl and the one who had engineered the mass escape from Arkham Asylum. So as much as Harley wanted to go pound pavement and find her love, it was safest to lie low, gain her strength back, and plan her next attack. He would be proud of her, even. So she spent her days in the shabby apartment, napping and watching cartoons and eating snacks.

Ivy, on the other hand, was more of a footnote in the breakout, which allowed her to slip out at night for all of the necessities of apartment life: groceries, cash, and an endless flow of flowers and shrubs and potted herbs that slowly took over every flat surface. Harley cooked, Ivy tended the plants, and it was simple. Each night, they switched off who got to sleep in the bed and who had to crash on the couch.

It wasn’t Ivy’s usual standard of living, as she lamented often, but Harley thought the digs were pretty nice.

Wheel of Fortune became their thing, by unspoken agreement. They tried Jeopardy, but they nearly came to blows when Ivy kept discounting Harley’s answers when they didn’t come in the shape of a question and after that fight, they stuck to the wheel. Each night, Ivy made a big show about how dumb she thought the game was, until Harley won two puzzles in a row and Ivy jumped in to compete.

She was so easy to manipulate, and Harley loved it.

But Ivy had been nice to her so she played nice back, never getting Ivy to do anything other than play Wheel of Fortune with her or try one of the meals Harley had cooked for them. Ivy usually stuck to her fruits and vegetables and all the other gross vegan things she liked, when she ate at all, but Harley quickly learned that a little pouting would get Ivy to agree to try just about anything. She grumbled, but Harley knew she loved it.

In return, Harley made sure to ask about her plants as she tended to them, delighting in the way Ivy opened up.

“It’s an uncommon strain of Solanaceae,” Ivy said, with a rare note of pride in her voice as she dusted her fingertips over the small potted plant. “In extreme cases of toxicity, symptoms include mania, convulsions and death. The one beside it is ricinus communis. The seeds contain ricin, obviously. When ingested by humans, it causes muscle weakness and eventual collapse. So don’t eat it.”

“Don’t worry, gorgeous. Even before all these lessons, if you come home n’ find me munchin’ on the plants, you’ll know I’ve gone completely crackers n’ we’ll have way bigger problems than rice.” She said it as if discussing the weather, before reaching out to run a finger along the leaves of a yellow flower. “What’s this one?”

“I wouldn’t do that if I were you.”

Harley pulled her finger back.

“It’s sensitive,” Ivy explained. “That’s what makes it so toxic. Animals learn to avoid the yellow to avoid the poisoning, which allows the plant to thrive despite the sensitivity. Touch it, and you’d probably die.”

“Good ta know.” Harley tucked that bit of information away for future use. She turned to another, a woody shrub in a pot in the corner. “How many people can this one kill?”

“That’s a ficus, so none.”

“Interestin’!”

She caught Ivy smiling out of the corner of her eye.

As easily as they slipped into a routine...they slipped into a friendship. It was uneasy and often stumbling, but they formed a comfortable familiarity in their days and interactions. Harley’s need to find Mr. J ebbed slightly; she opened to Ivy, chattering constantly, always trying to make her smile. And Ivy found herself slightly less prickly, as she could only talk to the plants so much. It was nice to hear another human voice.

One morning, Harley came out of the bedroom in the morning, rested and refreshed, to find Ivy sitting up from the couch, rubbing the back of her neck. She yawned, groaned, as she waved off Harley’s cheery good morning.

Harley walked past her into the kitchen - then backpedaled.

“You know, it’s a king sized bed,” Harley pointed out. “I promise not ta get handsy if you wanted to sleep together.” She didn’t really mind the arrangement as it was- Ivy’s pillows always smelled amazing after she had slept in them. They probably smelled even better while she was sleeping in them.

Ivy rolled her eyes and scanned the opposite side of the apartment instead. “You’d lose a hand if you did.”

“Wanna try?” Harley cocked a brow. Testing, trying. Always searching for the boundaries.

“It’s not about that,” Ivy continued, ignoring her. “We can’t spend much time in close proximity; Poison Ivy isn’t a misnomer.”

“A what?”

“You know what it means. And as nice as it would be to get eight hours in a bed every night, you’d end up sick before long. Really sick.”

“I could handle it,” Harley scoffed. “We are already friends anyway and we’re hanging out, so...what’s the big deal?”

“You’re the first tolerable member of the human race I’ve met, Quinn, and even then it’s mostly leftover goodwill for you securing me a windowed cell in Arkham back when you were straight. I’d rather not risk it.”

“Aww Pamela, you big softie. How do you know I was straight?”

“I mean, not out of your mind for Joker, Harley. And if you keep talking, maybe I will risk it.”

“And I’ll make breakfast!”

Later, they were settled on the couch together again, Harley with her cereal and Ivy with her tea, watching the morning news. Ivy was quiet, staring off into space, thinking - but when a new report about a South American jewelry exhibit at the museum came on, her head snapped up.

“That’s a quick way to not have to worry about one bedroom anymore,” she murmured.

Harley perked up. She was only half-listening for any word of Puddin’. “Is it worth much?”

“To the right buyer. I have contacts in South America.”

“Sexy. Let’s steal it,” Harley said with a shrug. “I need a new wardrobe.”

“Are you serious?”

“Yeah, I can’t keep wearin’ your clothes or the threads you steal from -”

“About the jewelry job, Harley.”

“Oh! Yeah. I always want to steal some jewelry. Let’s do it.”

Ivy laughed softly, almost to herself, and nodded. “We’ll see.”


	3. Chapter 3

She was halfway through her mid-afternoon, three hour nap, sprawled out beneath the sheets, dreaming away of Puddin’ taking her on an expensive Greek island vacation. The pulsing music, flashing lights, the gunfire in time with the bass. She felt his hands on her...and then real hands, much more gentle as they nudged her awake.

“Hey, Quinn. Wake up.”

“Whatzgoin on?” she asked, eyes still shut. It was Ivy, her voice as smooth and soft as her hands on Harley’s shoulder. When Harley realized, she relaxed and smirked lazily. “What happened to “get handsy and lose a hand”?”

“This is not-“

“Double standards, Pamela.” 

Harley sat up and the sheet pooled around her waist, leaving everything above it bare and shining in the sunlight. She opened bleary eyes just in time to see Ivy looking away with an annoyed sigh; Harley took the opportunity to check for a blush, but Ivy had grown immune since the first night, much to Harley’s frustration. Playing with someone like Ivy was a uniquely entertaining challenge.

Instead, Ivy just grimaced at the far wall. “We’ve been switching off in the bed and you’ve been sleeping naked?” she asked.

“It’s hot in here!” Harley lamented as she grabbed her t-shirt. “The window doesn’t open, we really need ta get that fixed.”

“Whatever. Here; drink this.” She pressed a vial into Harley’s hand, something dark green and shimmery. “I had to go out to grab a few things for it,” Ivy explained, “and I’ve never actually given this to anyone, but it should-“

“Bottom’s up!”

Harley threw back the vial like a test tube shot at a club. It raced down her throat, burning, and hit her like a punch in the stomach. Her insides twisted around on themselves. They came alive, slithering and writhing, and when she pushed her own hands down on her stomach to try to calm them down, Harley was seized by a brief moment of panic and a need to dig in to her own flesh.

“Jesus, you really did poison me!” she said, laughing at the irony as she groaned in pain. “I - wait.”

Because the feeling was gone as quickly as it came. It was like being electrocuted: everything, then nothing. All that remained was the vibrating feeling in her muscles, pent-up energy in an overcharged battery. She held up a hand, staring at it as it shook. Then her eyes met Ivy’s, who watched her intently. They sat together on the bed for the first time.

“What was that stuff?” she asked, her voice sounding a little weak.

“You always drink whatever someone gives you?” Ivy asked, eyebrow raised.

“Always. Why wouldn’t I?”

Ivy sighed. “Well, that’s what this is for, then,” she said. “It’s a unique blend of my toxins and about a dozen different bioengineered species. You’re immune to almost all poisons and toxins now, including my own. If we’re going to keep hanging out.”

A smile spread across Harley’s face as it clicked, one that even got the corners of Ivy’s mouth to twitch up. Harley giggled with excitement at the sight, eyes scanning all of Ivy’s face as if trying to commit it to memory. The smiles were up there with blushes. Trying to keep herself sober, Ivy continued, “And if Joker tries to pull another stunt like he did at Arkham last week, throwing you into that mess...well, you’re quite a bit stronger and faster now, Harleen.”

“Aww, Pammy, this is the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me!”

“Good, because it’s the nicest thing I’ve ever - _Pammy_?”

Despite Ivy’s disgust, Harley surged up to throw her arms around her, pulling her into a tight hug; Ivy stiffened at first, but just as she relaxed into the contact, Harley somersaulted backward off the bed and vaulted right out the fucking window. The glass shattered and she disappeared.

_“Harley!”_

Ivy pulled a vine from her pocket and blasted it through the window after Harley, but caught only open air. She dove forward and hit the sill so hard she nearly flew out. Nothing below her, no sickening sight of a body on the pavement. 

“Wheeeee!”

Ivy looked up.

Harley had flung herself through the window - and caught the rusted grating of the fire escape above them, a nearly impossible leap that required height, distance, and a midair twist. But she didn’t stop there. Harley was cartwheeling vertically up the outside of the fire escape, a human pastel pinwheel, doing with her hands and feet what Ivy would do with vines. The wild freedom in Harley’s laughter and the reckless abandon in her movements made Ivy smile; she waved a hand and the vine out the window twisted upward, following Harley. Ivy took a firm hold for the ride up.

When she reached the roof, Harley stood triumphantly on the closest ledge, arms spread wide.

“This feels amazing!” Harley shouted to the sky.

“More evidence that Verdant Industries should have accepted my research offer,” Ivy mused. “I’m glad it didn’t kill you.”

Harley spun on her heel, a mad grin on her face. She front flipped toward Ivy. “Are you saying you’re happy a human didn’t die?”

“Perhaps.”

“Well, I’ll take that. I owe you one, Ivy.”

“You did break my window, though.”

“Okay, so I owe you two. This is pretty much the coolest thing ever. Now I can do this!” She slung an arm over Ivy’s shoulders, despite their height difference, and together, they looked out over the Gotham skyline. It was quiet up here, the city alive far below them. Harley squeezed Ivy tighter. “See? Not dead yet!”

“We’ll run some more tests,” Ivy said. “I’m interested to see what else it can do.”

“Hmmm.” Harley peered around at the roof. Ivy watched her, until she realized that Harley was planning a route.

“No, not right now, you don’t have to do anything.”

Too late - she was off, with a front handspring onto an AC unit and a back flip off. She vaulted vents and made huge leaps between power generators and maintenance units, never once slipping; she skidded so close to the edge of the building that Ivy had half a mind to set up a webbing of vines below her acrobatics, but Harley’s confidence was justified in the way she moved, the strength with which she controlled herself. Gold medal gymnasts could have studied her for years and not gotten close to her blend of grace and power.

Most of all, she turned her smiling face toward the sunlight, truly enjoying it for the first time since she woke up in Ivy’s bed. She was human and alive and bubbling over with excitement as she skipped back over to Ivy.

“Ooh, I got an idea!” she called. “Ivy, hit me in the face, as hard as you can. Let’s test -”

The light in Ivy’s face went dark and her brow and lips dropped into a scowl as she recoiled from Harley, who was bracing herself with her eyes closed. “What? No, I’m not going to hit you, what are you talking about?”

There was a moment of clarity, like sunlight breaking through clouds, in which Harley’s face registered surprise and relief, before her omnipresent half-smirk returned. “Oh come on, Pammy, I can take it. Maybe I like it?” she teased, eyes flashing dark.

“Harley, _no_. I’m not going to hurt you.”

The strength of her tone sobered Harley up, and she had no more jokes to crack as she rejoined Ivy, looking out over the skyline again even as Ivy stared at her. She could feel Ivy’s gaze, but turning to meet it would be an acknowledgment of whatever dark thing drove her to ask that, and just how deeply it had rooted in her soul. She hated those still moments when the questions arose, when her own voice in her head started speaking over all the other ones, asking rational questions, terrifying questions. She needed noise, chaos, laughter! Anything to avoid the silence. Flashing another grin and a quiet giggle, Harley cast around for another subject, even looking down to the alley below.

“Hang on...what’s the fall damage on this stuff?”

“Fall damage? Harley, this isn’t a video game.”

She followed Harley’s line of sight nine floors down, and momentarily forgot Harley’s question when she saw that the alley wasn’t empty: among the dumpsters and piles of trash, two beefy, grizzled men were following a young woman. Both Harley and Ivy had experienced that scene one too many times to not recognize it immediately. The deeper the woman got into the alley, the closer the men stalked, and the more she quickened her pace, looking over her shoulder.

“I feel like another test,” Harley said quietly, and without any more warning, she jumped off the roof in a graceful swan dive.

It was going to take a while to get used to Harley’s newfound sense of invincibility. 

Ivy sighed. Road to hell paved with good intentions.

She let Harley drop for a half second before she dove after her, lashing a vine out at the fire escape as she looped an arm around Harley’s waist. Harley’s hands wrapped around her shoulders and pulled herself tight, loosing a giddy laugh at the swooping in her stomach. Ivy released them close to the ground with momentum and Harley went somersaulting forward, bouncing along the wet pavement of the alley with a clattering that spun the two men around. Even the woman looked back - when she saw what was happening, she broke into a run.

“Hey boys,” she called seductively, twirling a pigtail.

The men turned and watched her with uncertainty - on one hand, she gave an alluring smile and cut a nice figure, but on the other, they were pretty sure she’d just fallen out of the sky, and one must always be cautious in Gotham.

Their fear grew when Ivy descended, stepping lightly down from her vine behind Harley. “Two of you and one of her doesn’t seem like much of a challenge, or reward.”

“Yeah, that ain’t fair!” Harley said, honey dripping from her sweet smirk. “Play with us instead? We’re much more fun.”

Ivy sized them up. “Which one do you want, Harley?”

“Ummm...”

Too late - as she looked back at Ivy, one of the men stepped forward, flicking out a switchblade. Harley ducked just in time as Ivy snapped her vine like a whip, wrapping it around him and smashing him against the nearest brick wall, where it pinned him ten feet above the ground. The other man stumbled back and fell on his ass in fear.

Harley, however, stomped her foot. “I wanted that one!”

Ivy smiled. “Have at him.”

She released the vine and the man crashed to the ground. Harley let him stand up - by then, the other had gathered his wits and pushed himself to his feet as well. Ivy took him on without her plants, just for the challenge and satisfaction of feeling bone splinter beneath her fists. She was fast and graceful, stepping inside his swing and avoiding the first blow, smashing in his nose and following with an uppercut to his jaw. He stumbled back, disoriented, and she sent him flying with a rib-snapping kick to the chest.

Harley, meanwhile, was playing with her food. The man slashed at her wildly; he caught only air as she stepped out of range, or ducked, or slipped past his swing, cackling all the while. He tried six, seven, eight times, growing more and more furious with each miss.

“Oh, you were so close on that one!” she called, skipping behind him with an easy grace.

He got smart - feinted with the knife, then swung in with his free fist - but Harley was smarter. She blocked the punch and threw her shoulder into him, knocking him back and following up with a knee to the crotch. The knife went flying and he dropped in pain. She snapped a kick at his head - something cracked.

“I love that stuff you gave me,” Harley told Ivy with a grin. “I’m so _strong_.”

She waited, again, for him to stand and even let him collect the knife. If he were smart, he’d run, but his pride was injured now. He lunged unsteadily at Harley, which she sidestepped easily. The process repeated. Lunge, sidestep, kick, drop him, repeat.

After a few minutes, it was a miracle he was still standing. Harley hardly had to move. “Okay, Pammy, I’m bored,” she groaned.

“Finally.” Ivy pushed herself off the wall she had been leaning against. Her opponent had long since been knocked out. 

She flicked a hand out - two huge vines, as thick around as pythons, wrapped up the two men, lifted them into the air, smashed them together, and cocooned around them. She dropped them in the dumpster, then strutted over to blow a fistful of powder over their lifeless bodies.

“So they don’t remember what happened when they wake up,” Ivy explained coolly. “I’d rather not have them blubbering about where we live.”

Harley stared at her, jaw slack and stars in her eyes. “You are so. Fucking. Cool.”

“How are you feeling?” Ivy asked, brushing past the compliment. “Faster, stronger?”

“Definitely.” As they came together, she slung an arm around Ivy’s shoulders again. “Let’s go find Batsy, kick his ass. We make such a good team, Red.”

Ivy laughed. “Maybe another time.”

“Well then...there’s one more test.”

“Ideally, it doesn’t involve testing the limits of your mortality again.”

“That depends on you, Pammy,” Harley said with a smirk. “Let’s sleep in the same bed tonight.”

  
  


*

It was strange for both of them, to slide into bed with another person with no intention of sex - if there were a slumber party protocol, it had been so long since they’d had one that neither one of them remembered, besides Harley’s insistence on ordering pizza. When Ivy pulled the covers over herself under Harley’s happy gaze, she kept a distance as if worried the serum somehow hadn’t worked. Harley didn’t comment, though, and Ivy relaxed once the light was out. The darkness had a way of sharpening other senses; they had boarded up the broken window, but the sounds of the city still slipped in, distant engines and chatter carried on the breeze. The world out there, separate and different and apart from the world in here. Their slow and steady breathing, however, seemed louder, and laying beside another person suddenly felt more intimate, as if the body carried much more weight and took up more room than it physically did. Harley wondered how far her hand would have to wander before she found Ivy. She rolled onto her side, considering it, and heard Ivy’s voice in the darkness.

“Remember, Quinn. That serum doesn’t make you immune from losing limbs.”

Harley just smiled as she rolled back. Even if she couldn’t touch, she was right: sleeping next to Ivy did smell fucking amazing.

She had a friend. She couldn’t remember the last time she was so happy.

*

Harley woke early - _way_ too early, hours before she normally would wake. It was the feeling of movement on the mattress that awoke her, made her whole body contract with a subconscious, learned fear that held her motionless until she looked around the room and remembered where she was. And, more importantly, remembered that the body quietly moving off of the mattress was lithe and green.

She watched through her eyelashes as Ivy slipped across the room and to the bathroom, only closing the door partially behind her. Harley could see her reflection in the mirror; as she watched, she felt her cheeks warm when Ivy pulled the shirt over her head. The smooth cords of muscles rolled under her skin with the movement, and as much as Harley wanted to look away, she couldn’t. 

_No harm in lookin’, right?_

Nonetheless, she was thankful when Ivy stepped out of the mirror’s reflection and into the shower, because that would have been harder to justify and she didn’t really want to ruin their first sleepover by skeeving on her. 

Despite it being near dawn, there was no chance Harley was getting back to sleep. A restless energy gripped her limbs, probably the product of Ivy’s special little drink. She wanted to move, run, fight, fuck. More than that, she wanted to move beyond the little world that this apartment had become, feel the cold night air on her skin and the sound of bodies dropping around her. She wanted to run wild in the city that she owned.

As it was, she restricted herself to a workout in the living room, leaving the bed before Ivy got out of the shower. When Ivy finally emerged from the bedroom, long red hair damp down her back, Harley had been holding a handstand for nearly six minutes. Her shirt pooled around her neck; sweat dripped down her body.

Upside down, she saw Ivy stop short.

“Mornin,” Harley grunted.

“What are you doing?”

Harley huffed. “Exercise, sweet stuff. Some of us eat more than fruits and veggies, so some of us have to work to keep our perfect bodies. Unlike you.”

“Are you...feeling okay?” Ivy asked, directing the question at the ceiling, breathing deeply.

With another grunt, Harley fell forward to land on her feet, popping up with a smile. “Peachy. You didn’t kill me last night and I slept _great_. Whaddya think the chances are of us gettin’ out of here sometime soon?”

“Good,” Ivy said. “Soon.”

“Cryptic.”

“I’m working on it, Harley. Trust me.”

It wasn’t offhand; Ivy waited until Harley met her gaze, then held it there. She was asking a question, making a request. And Harley, who hadn’t even questioned it before this, nodded, beaming.

“I do, Ivy, I really do.”

Ivy smiled softly.

  
  


*

Ivy was out when it happened.

Just as the sun began to go down, she had said something about the museum and headed out the door - Harley had been focused on. Alone in the apartment, she wandered aimlessly to the kitchen. Pancakes. Perfect for dinner, perfect to share over their nightly Wheel of Fortune game. Ivy generally stuck to her healthy vegan food on the rare occasions she did eat, but she could occasionally be persuaded for something more indulgent if Harley begged and bartered and covered it with enough fruit.

Harley just finished making the appropriate mess in the kitchen before she could begin cooking when she heard the end of the news report: “...rumor that the Joker would be sighted at the Red Door Nightclub tonight has heightened fears that the wanted criminal will make an appearance for the first time since his dangerous escape from Arkham Asylum. GPD is urging the public not to panic and allow the police, and Batman, to do their jobs and catch this dangerous criminal.”

She dropped the whisk she was holding. She knew that club.

His voice, his laughter echoed in her head, sweet music in her ears. Her fluttering heart rate picked up, along with her breathing. She felt the ends of her fingers and toes prickle. Her stomach dropped.

Fight or flight is a funny thing.

*

The first soft falling of night had descended upon her apartment building by the time Ivy made it back from the museum, her mind abuzz with possibility. 

On one hand, museums in Gotham were knocked over so often that entire defense contracting companies had popped up to develop the tech to protect them, and reaped a handsome profit doing it. On the other, the South American jewelry would not be particularly valuable to anyone who didn’t already have contacts, buyers, and South American museums to donate it to, so Ivy suspected that security around her selected items would be low. With a little finesse and Harley’s newly developed strength and speed, the two of them could do it - a quiet job, in and out. 

Truthfully, Ivy could probably even do it herself, but she was starting to like the idea of a partner.

When she opened her apartment door, however, her stomach flipped. 

It was silent. She had grown accustomed to the sound of Harley’s voice, the too-loud TV, the constant clattering in the kitchen. Ivy hadn’t known peace since she rescued Harley, but she had grown her life around this strange new being within it, and suddenly the apartment, and everything else, felt empty without her and her chaos.

Still, she checked the bedroom and bathroom, just in case Harley was feeling down and had withdrawn into a quiet shell. Nothing.

Ivy tried not to let the disappointment bleed through her as her plans for a two-woman museum hit job slipped through her fingers. She had steeled herself by the time she walked into the kitchen, but leaned up against a vase of flowers was a napkin, with a note scrawled across it - the words hit in her in the chest, breaking that dam.

_“Sorry, Red. Thanks for everything. I owe ya.”_

  
  
  



	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been keeping it at a nice, steady ~3k words per chapter over the last few...now boom, here we are at nearly twice that. I couldn't help myself.
> 
> Thank you all so much for reading, I'm having so much fun writing this. enjoy!!

As Ivy had said, before the breakout with Arkham, Harley existed as little more than a rumor in the heads of Gotham’s underworld. But in the two weeks she had spent with Ivy, that rumor had become a legend, and the Arkham jailbreak by Joker and his devoted lover had spread throughout the city. By the time Harley strutted into the Red Door Nightclub in high heels and a long silver dress she had appropriated from a high-class boutique along the way, every murderous patron in the place knew her name, and every single one of them wanted her bill on their tabs, to curry favor with her as much as with her paramour. 

She only had eyes for him, though. He stood at the back of the club, in his private booth, looking over his kingdom, watching the return of his lost queen.

He welcomed her back with open arms. And when the police raided the club later that night, allowing her to show off her new found strength and skills, she wasn’t just a pretty piece on his arm anymore. She launched herself against them, cracking skulls and breaking arms. When the fighting stopped, she was still standing, and her silver dress was splattered with red. She felt like ten million bucks, and he looked at her like he had just won the lottery.

Gotham was not ready for the rise of Joker and Harley.

With Harley’s newfound abilities cementing her place as his go-to girl, together they began a crime spree that was more like a fever dream of murder and mayhem. Her debut as Joker’s girl had been the breakout at Arkham and she was intent upon topping that, night after night. They robbed from the rich and gave to themselves; they firebombed GPD vehicles; with a little finesse, they ignited a gang war between the triads and the cartels that ended with the police barricaded inside their own precinct, allowing Joker and his goons to run the streets.

Batman nearly bagged them, twice: first, when her Puddin’ had commandeered a yacht to treat Harley to a night on the water, the Bat and whatever child he had on his payroll that week swooped in, hitting Harley with a paralytic dart so that they could bring bridge to be blown: he and Harley had set up on a rooftop for the fireworks, and when Batman descended upon them, Joker simply pressed the button - BOOM. Fireworks as the bridge splintered, lighting up Harley’s face with a blue and red glow as she laughed and clapped. They could even hear the screams as the cars began to slide down the ruins of the bridge toward the water, and Batman had abandoned them again, to go save lives.

She was living high. Dizzyingly high. She bathed in diamonds and champagne. Her quiet nights were spent in clubs, dancing on tables and conserving her energy for the heists and the spree-killing and the car boosting. They loved each other, trusted each other, pushed each other further and further. She didn’t care how high she got, because she knew with him, the fall into the abyss would be sweet, and he would catch her. The people who dropped along the way, the murder, the fire...none of that mattered.

Until one night.

It was supposed to be a simple job: she and six of his goons had borrowed an eighteen wheeler and packed it with enough explosives to level a building, which they would use to blow open a high security vault that Puddin’ had been eyeing for a while. Harley was in the passenger seat, re-applying her make-up after a brief fist-fight with the truck’s owner.

When they passed the Gotham Natural History Museum, she was so busy staring at the large banner across the front of the building that she missed a swipe of lipstick and smeared it over her cheek. Not a bad look, though.

The banner read: _ South American Civilizations Special Exhibit, Ending Soon! _

She remembered that. She remembered the news report. It was like a hazy past life, but she remembered that they were valuable, that that had even piqued Ivy’s interest.

As soon as she remembered Ivy’s name, alarms sounded - and not only in her head.

“Stop!”

The bozo driving the truck slammed on the brakes. “What’s wrong, boss-lady?”

Harley jumped out of the truck and ran for the front of the museum, her eyes searching the windows for any sign of movement as her mind calculated: if the exhibit were still going on, it meant that Ivy hadn’t hit the museum until tonight. She was in there, somewhere, and she was in trouble now.

Harley ran back to the truck.

“My bat. Give it.”

“What’re you doing, you crazy broad? We gotta get this truck to the boss -”

But he stupidly handed her bat through the window, and Harley was off at a sprint, leaving him talking to no one.

*

Ivy released a heated, frustrated sigh. The alarm had been a minor slip in an otherwise flawlessly executed plan; sometimes she was too arrogant for her own good, and hadn’t anticipated a secondary movement sensor in the upper atrium. Now she had to hasten her casual stroll to a longer, more powerful stride. She still wasn’t rushing, but she did hate breaking a sweat.

Based on what she had gathered from three separate trips to case the building, the jewelry she was after was protected by bulletproof glass, in a sound-sensitive room with two tall windows, one entrance, and one exit opposite. The glass would not present a problem; the curators had made the novice mistake of decorating the exhibit with a garish attempt at rainforest flora, most of it fake, but with a few conveniently real bromeliads that, with a little of her infamous encouragement, she could use to wrench apart the displays. The sound sensitive room initially gave her pause, but now that she had tripped the alarm anyway, it had become a smash and grab job.

She reached the hall. Six glass cases along one wall held more than two dozen pieces of jade, gold, and emerald jewelry on silver cushions. It was just her style, but more importantly, it was expensive, and the sale would set her up for months.

She heard footsteps coming up the stairs far behind her. Fools - they hadn’t cut off her exit, ahead of her and through a fire door hidden behind a presentation screen.

Even with the alarm, it was all going so smoothly, until she laid her hand on the glass case. A steel door crashed down ahead of her, sealing off her escape.

At the same time, the pounding footsteps stampeded into the room. 

_ “Freeze!” _

She glanced over her shoulder at a dozen armed men.

“Gentlemen, there’s been a misunderstanding, please don’t shoot,” she said, voice silky smooth and relaxed. All she needed was her breath to create a gentle current of air, carrying her pheromones to them. “Lay down your guns, please.”

No one moved. Her brow furrowed. 

Upon closer inspection, she discovered that they wore slim, almost invisible masks over their mouths and noses, protecting them from any of her pheromones or powders or spores. The job became more complicated.

“Expecting me?” she asked calmly.

At the sides of the room and out of their line of sight, the bromeliads began to creep forward over the tiled floor.

“You think we haven’t seen you casin’ the place?” came a male voice she recognized. “I’d know you anywhere, Ivy.”

“Phillips? What, Penguin wouldn’t take you back after you got yourself thrown in Arkham? Museum must be desperate for guards, if they’re taking you on.”

He was a tall, thick-set man, marginally smarter than most of the henchmen she usually encountered, which had always made him a threat, relatively speaking. He nodded at her, without the grace of familiarity. “Takes a criminal to guard from criminals.”

_ “Smart,”  _ she hissed sarcastically.

And with that, she launched every living plant in the room at the dozen guards, trying to spear them on branches and ensnare them in roots. They had been expecting this, though, and dove out of the way, leaving only two of their comrades tangled and crushed. They spread out quickly, so that she couldn’t take them at once, and forced Ivy into ducking behind various displays as they fired at her.

She seethed. She  _ so _ hated breaking a sweat.

“Use the spray on the plants!” they shouted. She felt as much as smelled the herbicide as they sprayed her beautiful vines and leaves, burning them, killing them, felt the lovely bromeliads die where they tangled around ankles. By her count, she had taken down five guards already, but they outnumbered and outgunned her. She was running out of options.

As a child, her nanny had taken her on daily walks around a park near their estate. Local children played ball there, and Pamela had loved to watch. Her parents had never let her play, of course - it wasn’t for young ladies, but for the plebeian rabble with skinned knees and dirty clothes. Still, she watched each day, hearing the ping of aluminum bats, again and again as the kids hit home runs. The whoosh, the  _ ping. _ She would never forget that noise, and so when she heard it in the museum, she recognized it instantly.

As it turns out, an aluminum baseball bat on a skull does sound remarkably similar to the sound of a bat and ball.

Harley’s war shriek followed, and Ivy would never admit to a living soul the leap her heart took at the sound. More refreshing were the panicked cries of the guards as they broke rank, firing wildly around at the room as Harley crashed in. Ivy rose and rushed the nearest guard, hitting him twice in the throat with a flat hand and driving an elbow through his forehead, sending him to the floor. She paused to watch in amazement as Harley took out two, three, four more men and sent a fifth flying through the window.

Then she paused, panting, as Phillips, the last guard standing, dove for cover.

“Ya want this one, Pammy?” she asked.

Ivy licked her lips, strode across the room, and wrenched Phillips’s mask from his face.

_ "I’m the last thing your sane mind will remember," _ she breathed, and relished the way his eyes rolled back in his head.

With that, she turned back to Harley, who stood panting in the center of the room, a grinning mess in tight red and black leather.

“Harley, where did you come from?”

“I was in the neighborhood,” Harley said with a shrug. She ran an eye over the various damaged displays, before alighting on a thick gold collar not originally on Ivy’s target list. “Ooh!”

With a vicious swing, she shattered the glass and took the collar with dainty fingers.“So, ya got this from here or you need some more hot muscle?”

“Yeah, I-” she couldn’t articulate the words through her surprise, which was still taking shape after that firefight. 

“Don’ mention it, Red. I told ya I owed ya a few, right? That was like...” she paused to count. “What, nine? We’re even!”

She bolted for the smashed open window.

“Harley!”

Too late - Harley, apparently well-practiced at leaping out of windows, was gone.

*

“Keep your pants on, we made it in time to blow the wall!” she called over her shoulder as she dropped out of the truck, walking around the back to guide it up towards the brick. “He’s not-”

She caught a flash of white and then a hot pain in her mouth. It has been a while since she tasted her own blood, but the unmistakable metallic tang spread over her tongue.

Joker took her jaw between his thumb and forefinger, forcing her to look up at him.

“Which part of the painfully simple plan did you not understand, my dear?” he asked her. 

“I’m sorry,” she forced out through her clamped jaw. How could she have been so stupid? She was needed here. If he had been kept waiting for the explosives, anything could have happened. And for what?

It was as if he read her mind. “And all for a necklace, I hear?” 

He raised her chin to present her neck, where the gold evidence of her disobedience lay heavy against her throat. She felt her blood pumping against it, faster than usual as she tried to read his face.

“Pretty thing for a pretty thing,” he said. “Consider it your cut for the night.”

He gave her a shove and laughed when she flinched away. She barely had time to get her fingers in her ears before he gave the signal to blow the truck, knocking her back and exposing the millions inside the vault.

At least she got to keep the necklace.

*

The Pier 18 warehouse had long since been condemned by the city, which meant that it had long since become a favorite underground nightclub for some of Gotham’s worst rogues. The smell of the polluted water and dead permeated the place, only partially covered by the new clouds of smoke and cologne and alcohol. The last owner had left behind stacks of crates and corrugated steel shipping containers; the crates had been repurposed for bar tops and cheap walls for private rooms. The shipping containers provided more privacy, but judging by the sounds of moaning, fighting, and laughing emanating from these private lounges over the heavy thumping bass, the club-goers didn’t care who heard their revelry. The cheapest among them didn’t even bother to pay, lurking instead in the dark, dirty corners where pipes leaked dank puddles on the floor. The club lacked all the class and gloss of Gotham’s more upstanding businesses, but that lacking is exactly what drew the usual crowd of violent criminals and gang members.

In the center of the warehouse was the dance floor and lounge, all strobe lights and sweat and smoke. Paid dancers writhed in rusted, twisted cages salvaged from fishing boats; drunk dancers merely used table tops. Harley could usually be found in either position - especially when she caught Puddin’ watching someone else and she needed to prove her superiority - but tonight she reclined with him in the prime VIP lounge, a former office elevated over the rest of the warehouse. The windows had been blown out, but shards of glass still hung from the frames, providing a particularly vicious view of the club below.

Nonetheless, Harley had long since grown bored, fingers curled around a now-warm martini she had been half-heartedly nursing for the past twenty minutes. Even the darkest, most glittery, most debauched nightclubs were a snore next to bank heists and stealing cars. 

Worse still, Mr. J was beginning to grow weary of the evening too. He took a droll amusement in pitting his followers against one another and watching them fight it out between rounds of drinks, but she could sense the gnawing hunger rising in him. He was darkening, clouds moving over the moon. There would be blood spilled tonight if this continued; she lazily scanned the dance floor below, wondering whose it would be.

There were the Cosa Nostra boys, lounging around a dancer’s cage. Tough guys, with big egos inversely proportional in size to their male anatomy. 

Harley knew they had a rivalry with a group of street races over at the bar. She could slink down, join the street racers, point out the Cosa Nostra boys. Tell a joke:  _ “Heard the only place they get to the finish faster than you guys is in the bedroom. They got real problems, ladies don’t like that.”  _

Then she’d float over to the Cosa Nostra boys to relay the terrible joke the street racers just told her about them.

Then she’d order a drink and watch the fireworks, and Puddin’ would laugh and laugh and laugh as the knives came out. Maybe it would brighten his evening so that when they stumbled to the nearest safe house, he’d sleep easy, instead of having to work out his frustrations against her.

Or, she could just recline here, head heavy and haze, eyes stinging from the scent of stale smoke, watching greasepainted men bicker over mostly-naked women who wouldn’t give them the time of day if they weren’t being paid for it. Then, eventually, she’d black out or Mr. J would drag her home. What a life.

Or -  _ Ivy. _

She cut through Harley’s haze. She cut through the haze of the whole damn club, a gust of fresh cold air through the thick, humid scent of sweat and skin. Or, more appropriately, a glittering emerald shining out of the depths of a murky pool. Ivy wore a shimming sleeveless dress, with a slit up to her hip, so dark it looked black except where it moved and caught the light, revealing deep, deep green. Her fiery crimson waves cascaded around bare, pale green shoulders. She was dressed to kill. Harley thought with a giddy laugh, and the murderous, cold look on her face only confirmed it.

Maybe there really would be blood tonight - suddenly, Harley wanted nothing more than to watch Ivy spill it.

Harley absent-mindedly fingered the gilded edge of the collar around her neck, the one she had stolen from the museum the night before, as she watched Ivy order a drink at the bar. She used few words, no smile, and even the toughest of the men around her still seemed to melt. Harley, too, felt a new, pleasant buzzing in the back of her head. As if Ivy’s pheromones reached all the way up to the VIP lounge, Harley found herself standing before she knew what was happening.

“Oh, boys, look, you’ve bored our Harlequin,” Joker growled from his place on the couch. He tilted his head to the ceiling. “Do you have any idea how terrible your act has to be to bore a harlequin? They’re uniquely suited for laughter at terrible jokes!”

“Just need to get my blood flowin’, Puddin,” Harley said sweetly. “Or someone else’s.”

“As long as it’s flowing on the outside, my sweet,” he said with a cackle.

“Promise!”

She was used to the stares as she descended from Joker’s upper echelons. She knew what she did to people, specifically men - it was a strength. They would underestimate her, or be kind to her, buy her things and kiss up to get in good with Mr. J, all of which allowed her to get inside them and tear them apart if she so chose. But tonight? Tonight, every eye at the bar was on Poison Ivy and her inexorable magnetic pull.

The only person looking at Harley, of course, was Ivy. One pale green face turned her way amid a sea of dozens turned away from her. 

Ivy watched her all the way down, every swish of her short red dress, every click of her gold heels. With everyone else chanted by Ivy’s magic plant stuff or by Joker’s power, it was as if Ivy and Harley were the only two in the room; they kept their gazes locked on one another as Harley approached through the crowd, even as Ivy received her drink and waved off the bartender asking for payment.

“Didn’t think ya had any time for fun stuff,” Harley cracked as soon as they were within earshot.

“I don’t,” Ivy said simply. She waited until Harley presented herself to her, standing before her with an uncertain little grin. She looked around at all of the people watching - her gaze flashed up to the VIP area above. “Is there somewhere we can talk?”

“What do you need to talk about?” Harley asked, cocking her head, slinking closer. But Ivy continued to sip her vodka soda, cool as ever.

“Plenty of things. Mostly, I’d prefer not to shout over the terrible music in this place.”

Fair, Harley could admit that. She took Ivy by the hand and dragged her toward a shipping container, outside of which stood a grim-faced bouncer. He put his hand out for payment when he saw them. Harley raised a brow; Ivy breathed a cloud of green smoke towards him. Through power or intoxication or both, he waved them through.

The shipping container did block out some of the noise, so that the heavy bass-boosted club music was more of a vibration and not a tune that shook their teeth out of their skulls. But whoever owned this place hadn’t invested much in the way of light, leaving the shipping container dim and shadowy, which was perfect for sex and cutting deals under the table, but Harley wasn’t exactly sure which, if either, of those Ivy was here for. 

Ivy stalked to the far end of the room, her back to Harley, who followed cautiously. She wondered if she was immune not only to poisons, but Ivy’s fancy phero-smell things. The scent of Jasmine filled the space, relieving her of the stench of stale beer and sex. Harley breathed deeply as she followed Ivy’s steps.

“Why did you show up at the museum last night?” Ivy asked suddenly, turning to face Harley.

Harley stepped back. “I told ya, Red, I was in the neighborhood.”

“Delivering a bomb, I heard.”

“Not a _ bomb, _ we just needed to blow through some bricks to make a few bucks, easy-peasy.”

“And you stopped for me.”

Harley smiled at her. This was easier to explain. “I remembered your fancy jewelry and I figured I owed ya one when I heard the alarm going off.” When Ivy didn’t smile back, Harley shrugged and continued, “We’re friends, that’s what friends do.”

Ivy stepped closer to her, towering over her, cold and imperious. She still hadn’t cracked a smile, despite Harley’s warmest, nor flashed any hint of reassuring familiarity - it was like they had never met, or worse still, like Harley had clomped all over some flowerbeds somewhere, earned the full weight of Ivy’s wrath.

But when Ivy reached out and gently touched beneath Harley’s mouth, raising her chin so that their eyes connected, there was no anger in it. 

“And what do lovers do?” Ivy murmured.

Harley melted under her touch. The walls of the shipping container seemed to move in; the lights got dimmer. There was only Ivy in the darkness, the sharp crests of her cheekbones, her full lips, the way her dress hugged her body. She looked deep into Harley’s eyes, swiping her thumb over the corner of Harley’s lower lip.

It was her smelly-flower-thing. Harley was sure of it. The jasmine was so thick in the air that it made her head spin. She tried to resist - but couldn’t form a coherent thought, let alone words. Everything was a warm, blissful, sunshiney day as she looked into Ivy’s deep green eyes.

“Do lovers hurt each other?” Ivy continued. 

She rubbed at Harley’s lip again, before pulling her fingers away, covered in her makeup. Harley realized too late that Ivy had exposed the cut and bruise on her lip, from last night’s punishment. Without that makeup, she may as well have been naked, exposed and cold in the middle of the club. She put a hand over the healing wound and looked away.

Ivy bent down to recapture Harley’s gaze. “Did he do this to you?” she asked.

“I was late. Because of the museum.”

“It doesn’t matter why.”

“It does.”

“Harley, it does not. Answer me: is that what lovers do?”

“Lovers are passionate, love is pain,” Harley said flatly, anger mixed with a million other feelings welling up in her throat. “Mr. J loves me, and he’s a genius, and he needs me to help him. Needs me to keep him in line. When I don’t...it’s my fault, what happens. That’s love. Loyalty.”

Something was clawing at her, deep in the back of her mind, in the space that only breathed air in the dark of night when she couldn’t sleep, or when she was being hunted down in her darkest of nightmares. It was a painful, insistent fury in the back of her mind, a sense of unease, and she battled it back desperately even as she flashed a lazy, blissful grin at Ivy. She was well-practiced in covering the inner machinations of her mind.

“Love is love, Ivy, right? We can’t help it, and we can’t help the things we do sometimes.”

Ivy scanned all over Harley’s face, looking for some sign of a joke or a lie, but after a moment, she pulled herself away, muttering something Harley didn’t hear. The seething anger in her voice was much clearer, though.

“So, Red,” Harley said, with a cheery attempt to change the subject and kill whatever was trying to escape that dark place in her mind. “Now that you’ve got a drink and wet your whistle, how about ya come hang out with me? It can still be a fun night, just gotta touch up my makeup a little.”

Ivy worked her jaw, thinking. Then she strode past Harley for the door. “No.”

“Whaddya mean, no? Where ya goin’?”

“To talk to Joker.”

*

Harley didn’t catch up with her until she was at the base of the steps up to Joker’s lounge. Ivy moved with a powerful, purposeful stride, and the club patrons in front of her, even the worst of the worst, would part like the red sea as she passed. Harley, on the other hand, still felt a little weak in the knees, and she was delayed by a moment to catch her breath before chasing after Ivy.

“C’mon, Pammy,” Harley said, tugging on her shoulder as Ivy put her foot on the first step up. “It wouldn’t be any fun! We’ll plan a sexy ladies night -”

“Don’t call me that,” Ivy said.

“But you are -”

“No, don’t call me by name,” she hissed. “Especially not here.”

Harley scoffed, looking around at the slack-jawed morons watching them. “These guys? I could take ‘em. But up there...c’mon, Ivy, there’s nothin’ to talk about.”

“There’s plenty to talk about. What are you afraid of?”

Harley fidgeted. “Know any jokes?”

“Harley.”

“I’m hilarious but that doesn’t count as one.”

Ivy slowly released a frustrated breath. “My patience is thinning.”

“Please just leave it, Ive, c’mon. I don’t...” Harley took a deep breath, “I don’t want him to do nothin’ to you, y’know? You’re my friend.”

“Then he won’t,” Ivy said simply.

“Whaddya mean?”

“You and I are friends. He wouldn’t hurt one of your friends, would he? He loves you.”

Ivy quirked an eyebrow up, waiting for a response that never came, stuck in Harley’s chest. Harley didn’t know exactly why that stung as much as it did, but her arm fell limply to the side and she looked away. Ivy ascended with a silky smooth confidence that bordered on arrogance. Harley had half a mind to order another drink - but when Ivy disappeared into the lounge, she knew there was nowhere else to go but up.

No one had said a word when Harley made it up; she could tell because of the way the entire room stared at Ivy, standing before them with one hand on her hip; most important was Puddin’, still savoring his drink as he considered her. This was always the consideration stage: a new plaything would stand before him, and Joker would decide whether to kill, whether to hurt, whether to play with, whether to cut a deal with. If Ivy spoke, Joker’s mind would be made up much faster, but she seemed to know how to play this game. She waited, watching all of them at once.

When Harley entered the room behind her, though, Puddin’s eyes flashed to her and lit up. “Harley!” he said. “I didn’t realize you were going to be bringing warm blood back to us. It is blood, right?” he added to Ivy. “Red blood? Green?”

Ivy stared at him.

He tossed his empty glass away and it shattered somewhere in the corner as he sat forward. “C’mon, Miss Poison Ivy, I’m interested! You’ve brightened up this dull evening so why leave your audience hanging already?”

“I have a business offer,” she said, barely veiling her hot anger.

“A business offer? My business doesn’t exactly fit in a stall at the organic farmer’s market.”

So Mr. J was choosing to play, rather than to kill or deal. Harley could hear it in his voice and the way his eyes lit up. He’d been itching for a fight all night, Harley knew, and she would have loved it if it were anyone other than Ivy. Partially because she was worried about what Ivy might do - and partially because she was worried about what he might do. Now, to Ivy, and later, to Harley. 

She skirted the edge of the room, staying out of the line of fire, watching carefully.

Ivy was a formidable enemy, though. She didn’t waver. “I have a series of targets I hope to deal with in South Africa and Madagascar, and I’d like to hire a dozen of your men. In addition to my paying them, I’ll also split the take 60/40.”

“70-30 to me. My men, after all.”

“Deal,” she said coolly. “But I’d like to take your girlfriend as one of the twelve.”

Harley froze as every face in the room, except Ivy’s and Mr. J’s, turned toward her.

He dropped his head back onto the couch, languid as a low chuckle rose up in his throat. “So that’s what this is about?” The sound in his throat grew higher and louder; Harley winced and Ivy raised her chin, a momentary crack in her hard facade. “It all makes sense now - I wondered what the matching bling was for.”

Mouth falling open, Harley’s hand flew to her necklace, the gold and green piece that was part of the collection Ivy had stolen last night - the matching pieces of which, Ivy was now wearing. A thin green and gold chain hung around Ivy’s neck and dipped down over her chest, and two emerald earrings sparkled when she tossed back her red hair. She was beautiful, but that didn’t help the sickening fear that sank into Harley’s stomach.

Joker pushed on: “I can’t believe I’m jealous, right now!” His tone belied it, pure, cruel amusement. “My love, the fire of my loins, plans with someone else to knock over a museum on the same night she’s promised to help little old me rob a bank. I set up a special night for the love of my life, and she shows up late, with someone other villain’s jewelry hanging off of her - I was a fool! I never realized! I  _ trusted  _ you, Harley.”

It was a stage play for him, a pantomime melodrama, and he was relishing it. Not a body in the place dared move.

“Pure chance,” Ivy lied simply. “Harley’s an opportunist.”

“Oh, to be sure. That’s what I love about her, endlessly seeking opportunity. But it wasn’t just the museum, was it? No, my dear Harley came back to me a few months ago stronger, faster, spry as a spring chicken. That was you as well, wasn’t it? And now you stand before me, hoping to bluff your way into stealing what’s mine.”

All amusement died.

“Harley is mine,” he repeated. “Mine to do with as I please, to use and destroy and love. And no matter what happens, what special salads and flowers you give her, I’m part of her and she is part of me - and she will always return to me.”

And only then did Ivy finally look at her. It was a bold move in front of Joker and his men, but Ivy’s stoic face held a question only for Harley, a request for permission, an offer.  _ Will you? If not...just say the word. _

The gnawing in the back of Harley’s mind grew deafening - but still, the sound of his laughter was louder, banging around her skull and echoing like gunfire in an empty warehouse.

Harley shuffled forward and sank into the seat beside him, not looking at either one of them. He put his arm around her.

“See? You’re barking up the wrong tree, Vegetable Venus,” Joker drawled, narrowing his eyes. “Harley’s a carnivore.”

Ivy nodded. “I empathize. Despite appearances, I haven’t lost my desire for blood.”

Joker stared at her. Then he waved a hand.

The guns came out of every conceivable hiding place, from pockets and under tables to between couch cushions and out of champagne buckets.

“Let me oblige you, in that case. And we’ll answer our original question: green, or red?”

Now, her face asked  _ him _ a question, with a single raised brow.  _ Do you really want to do this? _

He didn’t give the order. With one last look at Harley, Ivy turned and strutted out of the room, head held high.

“She makes forest fires appealing,” Joker said with a chuckle. “Drinks!”

Harley obliged with a smile, but she was sick to her stomach - and with good reason. He made sure that for the next several days, she would feel the consequences of tonight every time she smiled or laughed or even stretched her body too far in any one direction. A tough life for a harlequin, but it only strengthened her resolve to not make any more mistakes, never make him look weak again.

But the memories persisted much longer than the pain. How Ivy looked. How she had smelled. How she had held her close and been oh so gentle when she touched the cut on Harley’s lip, and how not a trace of that tenderness remained when she stared down Joker, while twenty men trained guns on her, all for Harley. Those moments lived just beneath Harley’s consciousness, dormant during the day but taking hold in those quiet seconds just before she fell asleep, or just after she woke up before she realized where she was. She didn’t see Ivy, ever - probably in Madagascar, or whatever far-flung country had forests in danger - but Ivy was at the edges of everything Harley did, the scent of jasmine on the air in every lucid moment before she plunged back into madness.

Which is why, six months later, when Mr. J shoved her through a second floor window and left her on a bed of trash bags and broken glass in an alleyway, telling her to stay out of his life, the first and only place Harley thought to limp to was the wilds of Gotham Central Park.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two things: one, I took about two hours the other day and plotted the rest of this out, stringing together the bigger set pieces I have in mind, and I'm excited about it. This will likely translate into longer chapters with slightly longer wait times between them; let met know if you like the longer chapters and longer wait time or shorter chapters with less wait. For example, this chapter could have been split into two chapters, with Ivy's arrival at the club being the cliffhanger for the first. I think it flowed a little better as one long chapter, though.
> 
> Two: I originally intended to delineate more clearly between Ivy and Harley's POVs, with Harley's being tonally more chaotic and Ivy's being clearer and more eloquent; I've ended up with more of a mish-mash omniscient POV, sometimes swinging more to Harley and sometimes more to Ivy, but it somehow feels like it still works, at least for me. Perks of the subject matter, I guess. If it's throwing anyone off, though, let me know and I'll be more focused on keeping the POVs more distinct.


	5. Chapter 5

As fate would have it, once Harley became miserably lost in the park, the skies above Gotham opened up and dumped a cold, torrential rain over the city. Drenched, shivering, and laughing uproariously so that she wouldn’t cry, Harley eventually gave in: beside a lamp post with its bulb shot out, she found a dark patch of grass and flopped down, staring up at the sky, arms splayed wide on either side of her. The grass made for a softer bed than the trash heap where she had considered spending the night after she landed, but it was far colder and darker here. The next closest lamp post flickered twenty yards away, and here in the center of the park, so far removed from Gotham’s skyscrapers and flashing lights, the stars seemed brighter. There was not another soul around - she might as well have been the last person on earth. Quiet places in big cities have a way of making you feel so very alone, and broken hearts love loneliness.

Harley didn’t know how much time passed. She already had a worryingly loose idea of the concept anyway. Her fingers and toes went numb. What was left of her mind felt like it was going the same way, drifting in and out of a fog, towards a lighthouse that kept moving around in the darkness. 

As was customary whenever her grip on sanity was at its most tenuous, the scent of jasmine overwhelmed her. She took a great, grinning inhale and maybe her heart wasn’t so broken after all.

“Jesus. You look terrible.”

_Her_ voice. Warm and smooth as honey. Harley knew in an instant that her heart wasn’t broken because it nearly burst with joy and relief and she couldn’t contain the ragged laugh that exploded out of her.

“You should _smell_ me,” she said with a wide grin at Ivy, who was a silhouette against the glow of the lamp post, a black shadow rimmed with a red glow where the light filtered through her hair. All Harley could see of the woman was her long coat and a wide-brimmed hat - made all the more sensible in the rain when compared to Harley’s shorts and cut-off tank top - but she knew her, she could smell her, she could feel her presence in the way the grass seemed to stretch towards her. She held her hand up to block out some of the light, just enough to see Ivy’s hard face shift into a small smile.

“I can smell you. How else do you think I found you in the dark? You smell as bad as you look.”

Harley giggled, bordering on delirium. “Plant magic?”

“Actually, the local news reported a sad clown wandering central park,” Ivy said, amused. “I took a gamble. Now, come with me.”

She held out a slender green hand. Harley reached - and then froze. The last time she had seen Ivy, she had lowered herself into a seat next to Joker, leaving Ivy standing alone to face down a dozen goons with guns, her offer of salvation refused. Did she even deserve to take Ivy’s hand? Harley shrunk into herself, a rare feeling of doubt and regret knotting in her stomach, until -

“Come on, Harley. I didn’t come all the way out here in the rain for you to have second thoughts. You’re coming home with me, at least for the night, no matter what.”

“I’m sorry,” she gasped out on a shaky exhale, as everything she had done came crashing down on her. She reached up for Ivy’s hand.

“It’s all right, sweetheart.”

Ivy pulled her to her feet, holding her close as she shrugged out of her jacket and laid it around Harley’s shoulders; she entwined their fingers again, steady and comforting and anchoring Harley to earth as the blood rushed to her head and stars popped in her vision. 

“Gonna get your jacket all stinky,” she sniffed as Ivy led her slowly out of the park.

“I have a special perfume.”

Which was overwhelming Harley’s senses right now; the jasmine, vanilla, something woody, something sweet, a heavenly, intoxicating combination that with every breath made Harley warm and tingly all the way down her spine and through the ends of her toes. She swayed perhaps more than was necessary and Ivy pulled their bodies closer together to keep her upright. Ivy protected her. Ivy made sure she was okay. It had been a long, long time since she felt that, and she wanted to hang onto that touch for a long as she possibly could.

“Dya live here?” Harley asked, idly, looking around at the dark wilds of this more isolated part of the park.

“In the park?” Ivy asked, amused. “Not anymore; I do have a place close by to watch over it, though. We’re going there to get you out of the rain.”

“Mhmm. Warm.”

“You will be soon. We’ll even get you some actual clothes.”

“I like these!”

“It’s the middle of winter.”

“I’m hot blooded.”

“I am _well_ aware,” Ivy said wryly.

Harley didn’t remember much of the trip back - Ivy could have swung them on vines like Tarzan and Jane and she’s pretty sure she wouldn’t have known a damn thing about it - but she did remember the softness, the cotton and the silk and the warm bedroom light, as Ivy helped her out of her wet clothes and into something dry. She held firm in ignoring Harley’s half-hearted porn music, and politely looked away when she could, but Harley knew she wasn’t much of a pretty sight - or scent - right now anyway. Bruises, cuts, red and blue makeup streaming down her face and over her body, and all of it topped off with eau de dumpster.

She settled into the bed and sleep already began to creep over her. She looked up at Ivy.

“Listen, I’m really -”

“We can talk in the morning,” Ivy said. “Just try to recover a little bit. You’ve been through hell.”

“You can say that again,” Harley groaned, eyes drifting closed. “Thanks for everything, Pamela.”

“You’re welcome, Harley.”

*

Ivy’s new digs were _nice._

Harley awoke in a bedroom that was bigger than the entire tiny apartment they had shared all those months ago, in a decadent king-sized bed with far too many pillows. Windows made up an entire wall, displaying the Gotham skyline glinting in the light of the morning sun, still wet from the storm the night before and beautiful in the way it had been cleansed. A small jungle of plants covered the floor between Harley and the windows, but it wasn’t the view that interested her anyway - she was looking towards the door. Waiting. The last time she had woken up like this, confused and sore and in an unfamiliar bedroom, Ivy had appeared with tea.

But she didn’t. This place had more than one bedroom, and the other half of Harley’s bed was still made up. Ivy had slept elsewhere.

Harley pouted.

She liked the old apartment more.

Her toes curled against the cold tile as she tiptoed down the hallway, past door after door, until a long mirror stopped her - her hair was a mess, having dried in the wet messy tangle it had been in last night, and she was wearing something of Ivy’s, a dark green t-shirt a little too long for her, covering a pair of short black pajama bottoms. The clothes were soft and warm and smelled heavenly, but they didn’t do enough of a job hiding the bruises on her body, so Harley pushed past the mirror with a huff and pushed the image to the back of her mind.

The hallway opened on a large, luxurious living room with more windows and more plants. Harley paused and stared at them, just in case Ivy was hidden away somewhere in the foliage; some flowers she recognized from their lessons in the first apartment, some she had no idea, and some she couldn’t even be sure were real. But, as her eyes scanned the forest in front of her, there was one she recognized clearly - 

“The ficus! I remember this guy!”

A quiet chuckle and cleared throat spun her around: Ivy sat at the head of a long, glass kitchen table, watching Harley over a stack of papers, one eyebrow raised. Unabashed, Harley smiled at her.

“It doesn’t kill anyone, I ‘member. This botany stuff ain’t so hard. Whatcha reading?”

Ivy’s dubious stare didn’t go away, but she indulged Harley and flipped to the front of her papers. “It’s a study on land rejuvenation. Tripartite metatranscriptomics of a root microbiome responding to soil contamination.”

“So it’s a little hard.”

“Not terribly, I performed the same research in the Amazon a decade ago,” Ivy said, tossing the study aside. “But if we’re going to talk about academics instead of last night or everything else, I’m sure you’d rather discuss neuroscience.”

Harley snorted, flipping around a faux leather dining chair and sitting with her arms on the back. “Nah, I don’t do that fancy brain stuff anymore.”

“There’s no need to play the ditz now,” Ivy said softly.

“I’m not.”

Ivy ignored that. “Does he prefer you to? Your intelligence probably intimidates him.”

“Nothin’ intimidates him,” Harley said, narrowing her eyes.

“You’d be surprised. I’ve known him longer than you.”

“And I know him better’n you,” Harley shot back. “Our connection is special, even if it hurts sometimes. And besides, none of that stuff matters, so don’t try to play doctor with me, Ivy. I’ve learned that if you’re talkin’ about life you’re not living it; we’re in a world that’s so busted you can’t make sense of it all, just gotta grab it and hang on. With the ones you love.”

A proud speech from a proud smile, but Ivy just rolled her eyes. “You told me he shoved you from a window, Harley. He tried to kill you. And you’re still parroting his terrible speeches?”

Harley wavered, a sapling in a storm, divested of any framework or support. Something had rung true for her and for just a moment, the fog seemed to lift, which was a terrifying proposition. Harley remembered the way that Ivy had brushed away her makeup so long ago to reveal the bruise underneath, left her feeling exposed and vulnerable without it. Just like she felt now. The relief that had set into her bones since Ivy saved her last night now mingled with a fear and anger that had long since been roiling within her.

“It’s...not all love. Not all the time. It’s confusing,” she added, throwing her last words at Ivy with force. 

Ivy didn’t blink in the face of her vitriol; she stared Harley down the way she stared down Joker’s goons.

“It’s not love, sweetheart, and not confusing. Look at your arms.”

She didn’t need to; she had seen them in the mirror, and besides, the web of purple blotches on her skin was not a new sight. Moreover, she didn’t want to look at her arms, as each and every mark needed a justification, a reason for its existence besides the obvious, and her list was short at the moment, especially under Ivy’s hard gaze. Something in her began to waver, and she looked away with an exhale through gritted teeth. 

She pushed away from the table, crossing the living room. Ivy followed on quiet feet.

“And I saw these last night,” Ivy said, reaching out for her. She paused before she touched, waiting for either rebuke or permission, and despite her frustration, Harley nodded blankly. She allowed the soft pressure of Ivy’s hands to turn her back to a window; Ivy lifted her shirt, revealing more bruises, and a myriad of cuts and wounds, in various stages of healing. These, Harley couldn’t tear her eyes away from. She knew about them, of course; but they had been easy to ignore on her back - outta sight, outta mind.

“There’s a lot of me I don’t think about,” Harley realized slowly. She tugged her shirt back down and Ivy didn’t fight it. Her hand hovered over Harley’s back for a moment, as if she were going to reach out and smooth over the skin, but she pulled back when Harley released a heavy sigh. “And I don’t wanna think about it! I don’t want to talk about him anymore, ok? Just leave it.”

Ivy worked her jaw under Harley’s defiant gaze, but she took a deep, steeling breath to regain her composure. “Fine,” she said. She crossed the room and grabbed a small container from the shelf. “If you at least don’t want to hurt anymore, dab this on the bruises and cuts. It’ll help.”

Harley took it with some suspicion and examined the pale pink salve inside. “Thanks, Red,” she said quietly. Then, her emotions swinging in a brand new direction, she gave a crooked smile and asked, “How do you expect me to get this all over my back?”

It was meant to unsettle her, or make her laugh, or both, but Ivy did neither. She breezed away with a shrug, her annoyance thinly veiled.

“I hear you’re pretty limber.”

*

A half an hour later, Ivy knocked at Harley’s open door. She paused before entering, but she was still greeted by the sight of Harley’s bare back, her wounds finally covered in the salve. The pink covered most of her back, but it was a far sight better than angry red and purple before. Ivy cleared her throat to announce herself; Harley merely glanced over her shoulder, shrugged, and took her time to find her shirt. As she lowered it over her body, the movements showed off the lean cut of her muscles.

“Just coming to check on you,” Ivy said lightly.

“Yeah right. You’re coming to see if it’s not too late to rub my back. Well, ya missed out. I’m a strong independent woman.”

“And how does it feel?”

“It burned a little but - wait, you mean the independent thing?” 

Ivy nodded, without breaking into the smirk Harley had been looking for. Harley could have, and probably should have, cracked another joke, but she was covered in a cooling lotion that actually did feel pretty good to have applied at all, let alone all by herself, and maybe that opened something in her because she realized the words as she said them:

“Better. Better than I thought. Thanks, Ivy.” And she meant it, in a rare moment of earnestness. “What’s this stuff made out of, anyway?”

Ivy waved a hand, striding into the bedroom to examine a few newly budding roses. “It doesn’t matter. Harley, I know you said you didn’t want to talk about him, but... to put it bluntly, he’s going to get you killed. Even if he wasn’t, you deserve so much better than him. You need to stay away from him. Grow, without him and away from him.”

“Like your plants?” Harley said, watching as they bloomed beneath her fingers. Ivy pulled her fingers away abruptly and the flowers receded, but she continued to study them rather than turn to Harley.

“Plants are simpler,” Ivy said.

Harley sighed, dropping back onto the bed and feeling the soft sheets beneath her searching fingers. 

“Well...no matter what, if I go back to Puddin’ right now, or he sees me or finds out where I am...after what he said he’ll probably kill me, so you’re right. I need some money.”

Ivy tilted her head, a faraway look in her eyes. “You know what...that’s a good idea.” She spun on her heel to face Harley, who sat up in excitement. “Let’s go somewhere. But first, you’re going to need some new clothes.”

Harley looked down at her borrowed pajamas, then at the wet, stinking, stained pile of scraps they had peeled off last night and left by her bed.

“What about all my old clothes you stole for me last time?”

“You think I lugged around a suitcase between hideouts and across oceans for you for almost eight months?”

Harley let out a laugh. “Fine. Let’s go shopping?”

  
*  
  


“I’m feeling better already, Red!”

She checked out her appearance in the clothing store mirror: a black trench coat that hit at mid-thigh, a red scarf that looked like a gash across her white neck, and knee-high black boots. Ivy, sitting outside the dressing room, ran an eye up the length of Harley’s body and gave an approving nod.

“You smell better, too.” 

Ivy had forced her to shower before they went anywhere, and Harley acquiesced if only for the sake of her blonde hair. Now, with fresh makeup and sleek pigtails shining, she strutted towards Ivy, leaned down, and cocked her head as she inhaled a deep, satisfied breath.

“Not as good as you.”

“You flatter me,” Ivy said with a smile. She gestured to Harley’s outfit. “You should wear that out. Conveniently, you’ll fit right in in the financial district. We can head over if you’re done.”

“Wait, what? You didn’t say anything about -”

“I know, you’ll see. Are you satisfied with everything?” 

A pile of clothes she had picked out and tried on sat on a chair next to Ivy; it was a modest pile, mostly because Ivy said she would pay since Harley was majorly broke, but it was better than the torn, trash-stained get-up she had been wearing last night in the park. Harley had promised to pay Ivy back whenever she came into some money; Ivy had waved her off.

“I’ve still got some money left over from selling most of that jewelry we stole,” Ivy said, as they left the store, bags in hand.

“Whaddya mean, most of it? Why not sell all of it?”

“I didn’t - It’s not important,” Ivy said quickly. “But come with me, I wanted to show you...

She trailed off when she realized Harley wasn’t at her side - the other woman had stopped short at a shop window, displaying a curvy mannequin with jeweled blue lingerie. A wondrous smile lit up Harley’s face as she stared at it; Ivy’s shoulders dropped.

_“Really?”_ Ivy asked with a sigh.

“I’ll be fast!”

Ivy spent the next forty-five minutes paying detailed attention to her fingernails every time Harley strutted out of the dressing room in a new set of lingerie.

When they left the shop at last, Ivy took a huge breath, as if she’d been starved of oxygen inside the shop. It _was_ a little over-perfumed, Harley reasoned. She’d grown accustomed to Ivy’s light, delicious scent, so she was just fine with the way Ivy kept a close grip on her hand as she hurried them at a surprisingly clipping pace towards the Gotham Financial District.

“Ya okay, Pammy?” she teased.

“Fine,” Ivy said flatly.

“Where we going?”

They pulled to a stop. Ivy scanned over Harley’s face for a moment, as if still considering something, before she squared her shoulders to Harley and put her hands on Harley’s arms. She inclined her head, eyes dark and serious. 

“Do you still trust me? You said you did, a long time ago.” 

When Harley nodded, both confused at the question and confident in her answer, Ivy continued, “Like I said, you deserve better, Harley. I’ve known Joker a long time, a lot longer than you have. I’ve seen everyone who’s come before. He doesn’t love you, he uses you. You’re smarter than him, you’re better than him. You even broke him out of Arkham - he took the credit, even though his stunt nearly got you both caught.”

Harley worried at her lip. “What’s this about?”

“I’m going to prove it to you. You said you needed funds - I know a place that has more than they need.”

She inclined her head at the building across the street, which Harley realized for the first time was Gotham Central Bank. Three armored trucks sat idling out front, delivering cash from smaller branches. 

Her lips curled into a smile. “I’m pickin’ up what you’re layin’ down. What’s the plan?”

Ivy shrugged, stepping back and letting Harley have the stage. “You tell me. You’re in charge of this one, sweetheart, and I know you can get us in and out of there. Just keep your head down as we look around. Your timely appearance was about the only good part of my last job; I don’t want to get made a second time casing another one.”

As she studied the bank across the street, Harley whistled. “Rookie movie with the museum alarm, by the way. But I guess it was a good thing, because that’s how I found you.”

“It was new,” Ivy growled. “Must have been installed just days before - hypersensitive auditory sensors. The sound of my feet on the roof of the atrium alone would have triggered them.” She pointed out various buildings along this block. “The jewelry store there, the luxury apartment building, the gold exchange, even the pawn shop will all have the same sensors. Any place with anything of value probably will. But the bank will have the most.”

Harley cocked her head. “So if we do the job loud, blow something up...”

“The whole block lights up and the police are on us immediately,” Ivy finished for her. “We’d have to move fast, so I suggest we do it quietly to...” she trailed off, distracted by the dreamy, dark look that had come over Harley as she stared up at the bank. She reached out and grabbed Ivy’s hand.

“I like loud.”

*

Harley’s idea of loud was a fiery explosion so deafening that it rattled top-floor apartment windows a full six blocks away. 

Instantly, the auditory sensor alarms in every building on the block rent open the silence of the night, like the world was ending. Just seconds later, the wail of police sirens started up, cruisers rushing in from every angle to surround the bank. Within forty-five seconds, six cars had clogged the street and the beat cops had their guns trained on the doors. As they waited, frozen in the cacophony, the second floor of the bank went up in flames. Pure chaos, just the way Harley liked it.

When Jim Gordon arrived to the scene six minutes later, four fire squadrons were battling flames while two SWAT teams had weapons trained on the dark lower windows. Three dozen officers, six fire trucks, and two ambulances filled the street, all with sirens blaring and lights flashing, men shouting as they ran. A sergeant passed Gordon, yelling into a radio for helicopter and sniper support from the surrounding rooftops; the alarms from the other buildings still rang so loudly that he felt his skull vibrating.

Gordon squeezed his eyes shut against the noise, then reached out and grabbed the sergeant. 

“What’s the situation?” Gordon demanded.

“Unidentified number of hostiles inside,” he reported. “Not sure who they belong to - they said something about hostages and demands!”

“Get a god damn negotiator in here while you’re crying about sniper support,” Gordon growled. In the meantime, he seized a bullhorn from another officer and strode powerfully to the front line. “Attention - you are surrounded. You have options. Let’s talk about them.”

Through the smoke, he could make out a number of armed figures in the window, standing sentinel. Then: _“We have hostages!”_

Gordon put his hand over the mouthpiece. “Is that Harley Quinn? Joker behind this?”

The other officers shrugged, but they tightened their grips on their weapons. As Gordon raised the bullhorn again, Harley shouted something else - something about a car, but it was lost in the ear-splitting noise of the sirens and alarms.

“Can we get this shit turned off?” Gordon demanded over his shoulder.

“We’re working with city security now, sir. The explosion triggered everything in a two block radius.”

“I don’t want anyone hurt, Harley,” Gordon called. “I want to talk. There’s a lot we can offer each other. Can you tell me how many hostages are inside? Can you send one out?”

A pause - unnaturally long. “Don’t make us hurt anyone!” she shouted.

Gordon frowned.

*

From four floors up in the building at the far end of the block, Ivy leaned against the window and grinned at the remarkable police presence.

“I’m impressed, Harley. I knew you could do it but this is...” she trailed off, shaking her head with disbelief.

“Just a little razzle dazzle,” Harley said, though she brimmed with self-satisfaction as she shoved diamond necklaces into a silk bag. “GCPD’s gotta learn to watch my hands, not my eyes!”

Now that the police had done them the courtesy of turning off the screeching alarm in this building, Ivy and Harley had time to chat. “If we move quickly enough, we can even nail the cash for gold place next door before the pigs catch on,” Harley added.

“We have time,” Ivy said. She focused on her vines for a moment as they ripped through the next safe and a new wave of jewelry spilled out onto the floor, prompting a delighted cry from Harley, which in turn lifted the corners of Ivy’s lips. She continued, “Gotham PD has pulled out all the stops for this one, air support, bomb squads. They’re one step short of bringing in tanks. They’re men. Their egos will demand a long standoff before a heroic rush to save the hostages. Totally useless.”

“I can think of one thing they’re useful for,” Harley said with a smirk, to which Ivy replied with a scoff and a raised brow.

“They’re not even irreplaceable for those base amusements, darling.”

Harley’s breath caught. Darling was new. Whatever tug of fear she had felt when Ivy scoffed vanished under the warm press of a new, sweeter pet name. And then there was the rest of it; Harley kept her voice even as she asked, “What’s that supposed ta mean?” 

It may have been the light, but Harley could have sworn she saw Ivy’s cheeks darken when she turned away, looking back toward the police. Harley shoved the last of the jewelry into the bag and slunk forward, intent on investigating this rare phenomena, but Ivy waved her off with a casual shrug.

“Nothing. Just feeling particularly vitriolic tonight, given recent events. Come on, Gordon will catch on eventually and I’d like some gold to go with my diamonds.”

“Your wish is my command, Pammy!”

She skipped across the room, loot slung over her shoulder, to take Ivy’s outstretched hand. Fingers entwined, they slipped out of the window and leaped to the next rooftop, and they didn’t let go once they hit it at a run. Far below, the cops were entirely too preoccupied to look up at the lithe silhouettes of two beautiful women darting across the rooftop, hand in hand, lightheaded with the blissful sensation of something new and lovely and pure between them. 

*

Two bags of high-end jewelry. Another four bags of cash and gold from the exchange. And Harley carried all six proudly as they dashed through a parking garage twenty minutes later, a clever little escape route that took them to the other side of the block away from the police without exposing them to the helicopters above or the cops below. Ivy had secured a getaway car in an alley on the next block, they just had to make it there clean.

A proposition made more difficult when Harley suddenly froze and threw an arm across Ivy’s chest. “Shh - listen.”

The soft tap of rubber soles on concrete floated up from the floor below them, a group of a dozen men in combat boots moving quickly towards the ramp to Ivy and Harley’s level.

_“Interlopers,”_ Harley whispered, with a vicious smile. “Hold these, Red, I got ‘em.”

Without waiting for an answer, she traded her loot for the bat that Ivy carried for her and danced away with exaggerated, cartoon character strides - Ivy had no idea what she was doing until Harley turned with a grin to see if she had made Ivy laugh. But Ivy’s eyes widened over Harley’s shoulder, as behind her, the shadows of half a dozen well-armored SWAT members with rifles grew larger and larger up the ramp, with Harley heartbeats away from being in their crosshairs.

Ivy crossed the space between them in two long strides, sliding the loot bags out of sight beneath a nearby car as she moved. The picture of grace, she swung into Harley, wrapped her arms around her, and their combined weight whirled them up against the nearest concrete wall and out of sight of the cops just as the men came into view. Harley slammed into the wall, hard, but Ivy’s hand wrapped around the back of her head to cushion it before it hit the concrete; her forearms bracketed Harley’s head, her body pinned them to the wall, and they stayed motionless in the shadows.

As the cops passed, Ivy kept her eyeline level with Harley’s forehead, focusing on staying as silent as possible. But as she became more aware of the body pressed to her own, another rabbit-heartbeat and soft breath on her neck for the first time in a very long time, she couldn’t help but look down.

She expected to find that arrogant, impish spark in Harley’s eyes. Instead, she found fear and the first shining of tears.

“I’m sorry,” Harley whispered, staring through Ivy. “I didn’t mean to -”

Not fear of the police - fear of _her._ Fear of her reaction. It was a fear ingrained deep, a scar gouged down past her pretty surface level teasing and madness and revealing a much deeper, darker part of her psyche.

Ivy leaned in close. “It’s fine, sweetheart, it’s fine, you didn’t do anything wrong,” she breathed in Harley’s ear. “You didn’t make a mistake - I don’t want you to get hurt. Too many guns.”

Harley nodded, trembling against her, and Ivy’s two wishes in that moment were first to tear Joker’s skin from his muscles and his muscles from his bones, and second that Harley wouldn’t say another word. The cops seemed to sense them, or hear her quickened breathing; one turned a quarter of the way over his shoulder, back towards them. Automatically, Ivy clapped a hand over Harley’s mouth, silencing her completely.

“It’s okay,” she continued to murmur, between barely parted lips against the side of Harley’s forehead, “We’re fine. Just wait for them to pass.”

The footsteps faded and slowly, Harley and Ivy’s eardrum heartbeats, pounding against each other, slowed. Ivy kept her hand over Harley’s mouth for several seconds after the garage had gone silent again. When she looked down at Harley, everything had returned to almost normal - except for the fact that Harley now looked up at her from beneath darkened, hooded eyes. They stared at each other for a moment, then - Ivy ripped her hand away.

“Did you just lick me?” she whispered furiously.

Harley grinned and gnashed her teeth. “Coulda been worse.”

Ivy stared at her in bewilderment as Harley leaned back against the wall and giggled. The swing from wide-eyed and fearful to wicked amusement was so fast it unbalanced Ivy, usually so secure and steady in her control of her environment. She began to laugh, in disbelief.

“I love seeing that look on your face, Pam,” Harley said. “Let’s get the loot and get outta here.”

“Are you sure you’re okay?” Ivy asked as they swept the bags out from beneath the car where she had thrown them. Harley frowned.

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

The wound had healed over and Harley had hidden it away as if it never existed in the first place. Ivy wouldn’t push.

The adrenaline of nearly being caught replaced the adrenaline of getting away clean, spurring them faster toward the opposite end of the parking structure, where Ivy readied a rope of vines to lower them to a waiting getaway car. On the precipice, Harley looked back toward the still-burning bank and sounds of chaos, wistful.

“Are you sure we can’t hit the bank too?”

Ivy followed her gaze. “We could. But that would require essentially terraforming the ground, killing the majority of GCPD, and - get that look off of your face, we’re not doing it,” she said, with wry amusement. “It would bring Batman down on us. Not worth it.” 

“Ah, Pam-a-lamb, one day I’ll teach you to dream big.” She took hold of the vine Ivy raised for her. As they descended, Harley cocked her head, listening to Jim Gordon shout commands over the bullhorn. “How long do you think it’ll take them to figure it out?”

Ivy smiled. “Long enough for us to get out of here.”

In fact, it would be several hours before GCPD steeled themselves and exploded into the bank, only to find a half dozen department store mannequins in various poses around the bank floor, strapped with super soakers and covered with lipstick kisses. They found the guards in an office, tied up and sleeping soundly. And finally, they stumbled upon a busted radio, the batteries dead, with a cassette tape labeled “Love Ya Gordy!” that just played Harley’s voice over and over again. The money in the vault was completely untouched.

And by the time the police realized they had been played, Harley and Ivy on the other side of town, at Harley’s favorite greasy all-night diner, clinking together orange juice glasses and toasting to their newfound wealth.

“And starting as friends all over again,” Harley added, unable to contain a smile under Ivy’s gaze as they tipped their drinks back. They were alone in the diner at this early hour, their loot bags stacked between them in the corner booth they shared, and the shifty, greasy waiter on duty knew better than to crowd them too much.

“Friends,” Ivy agreed. “And...partners?”

It was an offer, not a declaration. “Meaning this wasn’t just a one night stand?” Harley gasped.

“Not if you don’t want it to be.” She paused, lost in thought, as she studied each and every one of Harley’s features, from her bright eyes to her sly smile, before continuing: “I don’t usually enjoy my time in Gotham. The air, the smell, the people. But something is more rotten than usual and money is being moved around to a long list of companies I don’t like. I want to...redirect that. Forcefully. Clean up the city a little.”

Harley smirked. “You sound like Batsy.”

“What Batman does to his enemies is very different than what I will do to mine. Plus, he has teen sidekicks...I want a partner.”

“Even after I almost got us caught tonight?”

“You didn’t, darling,” Ivy insisted. She reached out, but when she saw Harley stiffen at the extension of her hand, she pulled back. “I didn’t want you to get hurt, that was all. You’re smart, Harley, way smarter than you or anyone else gives you credit for. And we work well together, so why not bleed Gotham’s richest dry and take out a few CEOs along the way? And since I don’t think you’ve found a place to stay yet...you always have one with me.”

Harley lit up like the morning sun. “I can stay? Because listen, I was really lovin’ that king bed and that bachelorette penthouse view...”

Ivy smiled. “We’ll see about that. You might be sleeping on the couch; I was going to adapt that room into a greenhouse.”

“But I’m way more fun than a buncha plants.”

“So far,” Ivy teased, pulling a smile out of her. But after a moment, Harley sobered, lowering her voice.

“And you’re not...mad at me for leaving last time? I know I shoulda said goodbye, not left a note, but I just...he took over.”

The bright, cheery neon lights and white laminate countertops of the diner suddenly stopped feeling so cheery and bright. It became an alien, liminal space, the kind you end up in, rather than plan to go. Ivy glanced around at the empty booths, then outside, as if Joker would appear out of the darkness and press his mad grin to the window. As Harley shifted uncomfortably, Ivy traced the rim of her glass with her fingertip, pensive.

“I don’t do the jealous thing,” Ivy said, her cool, easy confidence surging back. “I’m not angry at you for leaving. I’m used to being alone; your presence is a bonus, and I know how to avoid attachments.”

Harley’s face fell, and she focused on her own drink. Ivy continued, haltingly, as she tried to find the words. “Even still...I wasn’t going to bring him up again after our morning conversation, especially if it means you’d go running back to him the first time he crossed your mind. I didn’t want to risk that. Not for my sake, but yours.”

“He doesn’t cross my mind...he is it.” She shrugged, unable to meet Ivy’s eyes. “But every once in a while, something else breaks through, like I’m swimming to the surface and breathing. Tonight was the first time, in a long time, that I felt that way.”

“Hey,” Ivy said quietly. This time, she reached out more slowly, and Harley allowed her to lay a hand on her arm. She waited until Harley met her gaze before she said anything else. “I understand. But he’s not all that you are, and I’m going to show you that. Tonight was just the start.”

Harley didn’t quite believe her, if the half-hearted smile on her face was any indication, but she was content with the promises and the arrival of their food prevented any further debate. The waiter threw down a small fruit salad for Ivy, and a tremendous platter of eggs, bacon, hash browns, and pancakes slathered in whipped cream for Harley, before slinking away without a word.

Ivy glared after him, then turned to eye Harley’s plate with a disdainfully curled lip. “I’m having second thoughts about you moving in.”

“ _Pam_ cakes,” Harley said simply, “with whipped cream. My favorite.”

She flashed Ivy the briefest of glances to clock her reaction, before digging into her 4am breakfast with happy vigor, a complete pivot of her mood just seconds before. Ivy watched her for a moment, stunned not by the terrible pun, but by the seemingly untethered swing of her emotions. It was almost too fast, too sudden, and Ivy found herself wondering if it had been intentional, the machinations of a truly brilliant woman beneath layers of psychopathy, both real and manufactured. For whatever reason, even she didn’t know, but she liked Harley, as a person and as a partner. She enjoyed being around her. But even still, she couldn’t be sure if this was Harley’s true self, or if the girl was just making a play on her emotions, securing a place to stay and a stable partnership for the time being.

But even if she didn’t trust Harley, she at least respected her, and sometimes that’s all someone like Harley Quinn needed to start making strides in the right direction. It’s not like she was getting respect from anywhere else. Ivy could at least give that to her; she remembered what it felt to be without it.

It helped that a friendship with Harley was damn lucrative, Ivy thought to herself as her gaze shifted to the bags of gold and jewelry they had secured for themselves..She had targets to take out and a strong partner to help her. She could make this work, collecting the fruits while preparing for the inevitable disaster, all without allowing herself to be manipulated into anything, or, worse, getting genuinely emotionally involved.

Plus, it warmed a cold part of her to watch Harley try to lick an errant splatter of whipped cream off of her smiling lips. She would enjoy this feeling while it lasted.

And, of course, there were other feelings they could enjoy. Like when the now-scowling waiter callously dropped the check on their table and skulked back into the kitchen, and Harley and Ivy only needed to exchange a single glance to decide in that moment: they grabbed their bags and bolted. The shouts of the waiter and cook were lost behind them in the sound of their laughter as they rushed away from the restaurant, hanging on to each other. They headed for their stolen car.

So close, Harley had to look up at Ivy, and she had stars in her eyes. “Explosions, trolling an entire police department, grand larceny, grand theft auto, and dinin’ and dashin’. You sure know how to cheer a girl up, Pammy. I’m lucky.”

Ivy said nothing, but she leaned a little closer to Harley as they walked, and Harley responded by clinging tighter to her waist, just as she had in the park the night before, but with more joy than she thought possible.

A lot could go wrong. A lot probably would. But she’d be fine. They’d be fine.


	6. Chapter 6

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm not going to stop saying it, thank you for all the support on this. I used to write quite a bit, but it's been a while since I've written so much and enjoyed it so fully, so other people enjoying what I create has been the cherry on top.

The money from the jewelry and the gold would sustain them for quite a while, even when Harley was making dinners and smoothies out of the expensive organic veggies, and it even provided enough left over to allow for the pursuit of more frivolous endeavors.

For Harley, it was shopping. Badass leather jackets, heels, sunglasses, lingerie, clubwear, formal gowns - she had a necessity for none of it which meant a desire for all of it, and more money than sense to pay for it all. Ivy stayed on brand as well, with donations to environmental organizations and a fancy hydroponics setup for one of the bedrooms she had selected as an alternate location for her greenhouse now that Harley had taken over the room with the windows. Harley suspected that may not have really been allowed in the lease, but there was also no evidence there was a lease at all, and that Ivy hadn’t just poisoned and mind controlled the landlord, so she didn’t question it.

One night, Harley lolled on the couch, head hanging off and feet up over the backrest. Upside down, she watched Ivy tending to the plants with a spray bottle, spritzing them as she muttered to herself and took notes.

“Whydya spend so much time waterin’ em when you could just,” Harley waved her hand vaguely, “make ‘em big?”

Ivy paused, half-turning her head over her shoulder to see Harley out of the corner of her eye. “It’s relaxing,” she said after a moment. “I enjoy caring for them, in the small moments. I can feel the way they respond, the purity and vitality as they grow in response to care. I find it soothing.”

“You can feel them?”

When Ivy confirmed this, Harley yipped, rolled backwards off the couch, and bounded toward a potted shrub. She ran a delicate finger over the branches

“Can you feel this?”

“I can,” Ivy said evenly. She set her spray bottle down and stayed perfectly still, focusing her attention and willpower on the blank wall ahead of her.

Harley, meanwhile, had darted to another table behind Ivy. “Okay, close your eyes. What am I touching now?”

A beat. Ivy rolled her shoulders, drew herself up. “The stems of the calla lily.”

“That’s the white one?

“It is.”

“Damn you’re good! What about -”

“Please don’t finger the wolfsbane, sweetheart, it’s particularly dangerous.” Ivy turned to her at last, catching Harley pulling her finger away from the purple flowers. “We could do this all night, but I’ll just tell you: I can feel all of it, all over the world. I have to focus to know consciously what is happening far away, but...there’s a reason I protect it so fiercely.”

“A misanthropic plant empath. That is fascinating.”

“I thought you didn’t like to talk about that brain stuff?”

Caught, Harley hesitated for a second before smirking and bouncing back to the couch, an overeager puppy. “Ya got me. C’mon, let’s watch a movie when you’re done!”

An hour later, halfway through some terrible action movie with more explosions than dialogue, Harley fell asleep on the couch, her feet up over the backrest once more. Her head was inches away from Ivy’s lap, her blonde and pink and blue hair splayed out like a halo and tickling Ivy’s thighs. Ivy kept perfectly still for the entirety of the movie and even long after the credits rolled, waiting for Harley to wake up, but the girl was out, snoring softly. 

Ivy smiled down at her. She wanted to reach out and arrange a few locks of hair, just so that Harley wouldn’t be such a mess when she awoke, but she held back. Instead, she layered a thick fleece blanket over Harley’s body, and went to bed.

She would come to, by and large, regret telling Harley about her connection with plants. 

The next day, she assumed Harley had taken an innocent interest in the topic when she insisted on going to the local farmer’s market. Instead, Harley dragged her to each stall to ask what the vegetables were feeling and what the flowers thought of the overcast weather. She giggled as she chattered with a bowl of cherries about a nearby man with a tank-top three sizes too small for his bodybuilder frame.

Ivy’s cheeks grew hot. She scanned the farmer’s market, seeking the shortest way out of the crowd, out from among all of these sweating, stinking, obnoxious  _ people, _ and especially away from Harley. 

And then, Harley turned that smile on her, and everyone else melted away.

“The voices sound better if they’re coming from the flowers instead of inside my head.”

She couldn’t stay mad at that. She couldn’t even be mad later, when she made salads from the groceries they had picked up and Harley took ten minutes to decry Ivy’s mass genocide and cannibalism, renewing her speech every time Ivy took a bite; it went on until Ivy gave in and smiled. Harley mirrored it as she sat down to eat, her mission accomplished.

Later that night, when Harley joined Ivy on the couch, she wrapped herself in the previous night’s blanket like she was huddled up on the Arctic tundra, blanket over her head and around her shoulders, and as their movie wore on, she gradually tipped towards Ivy. By the climax, she was snoring against Ivy’s shoulder. Harley’s body made for a warm, pleasant weight against her, and the blanket piled around her made for a thick enough barrier between them that no one could ever raise a brow.

Ivy used a vine to ensnare a book to read, and they stayed like that for a long, long time.

*

Harley jolted upright, tearing the tangled blanket off of her face and sucking in a gasp of cool air. She tended to thrash when she slept; this was the second night in a row she had slept on the couch, and the second morning she had awoken with that damn cozy blanket hopelessly wrapped around her like one of Ivy’s woman-eating plants.

It was also, Harley noted with the semblance of a pout, the second time she’d fallen asleep with Ivy there and woken up without her.

She’d have to explain this whole “sleepover” concept again. Ivy had glared through the lecture about girl code the first time, but that wouldn’t stop Harley from doing it a second and third and fourth time. 

You know what they say about doing the same thing over and over again. It was, therefore, her forte.

Her grumpiness vanished a second later when she rubbed her eyes: in front of her, on top of one of Ivy’s coffee table rainforest books, sat a tall, steaming mug of hot chocolate with whipped cream and sprinkles. Harley let out a delighted gasp, grabbed it, and rushed to find Pamela.

She hadn’t been into Ivy’s bedroom, yet. Ivy herself was rarely in there, only to sleep, shower and dress, and Harley usually fell asleep long before Ivy and woke up well after her.

“I need my twelve hours of beauty rest,” she had told an incredulous Ivy one afternoon, shlumping through the kitchen in her pajamas.

Given the state of the rest of their apartment, Harley’s eyes widened when she bounded into Ivy’s room and found it so neat. Simple furniture, understated elegance, a massive bed with white silk sheets. The plants were there, of course, but rather than sprawling jungles and dazzling colors and maneaters taller than she was, Ivy had lined the place with quaint floral arrangements, orchids and lilies and pink and white roses, alstroemerias and tulips, flowers so beautiful Harley wouldn’t have believed they were real, if this were anyone else besides Ivy. Delicate green leaves and vines trailed between the various arrangements, a reminder that they were all, in fact, alive and not the wet dream of some expert wedding planner. Between the natural light from the windows and the colors of the flowers, the room looked and smelled heavenly, and Harley couldn’t help but indulge in a deep inhale and contented sigh. This was calm. It was a sanctuary.

In the middle of the room stood the only thing out of place: a large bulletin board with a series of newspaper clippings tacked to it and a lot of empty space besides. Ivy stood in front of it, her back to Harley, her arms over her chest, so deep in thought that she didn’t turn when Harley entered behind her.

She had piled her hair on top of her head in a messy bun, a perilous mess, which some strands had escaped and now hung loose around her face, unnoticed in her concentration. She wore a long button-down shirt, loose and slightly wrinkled and long enough to cover the tops of her thighs. The sleeves were rolled to her elbows. 

_ A man’s shirt, _ Harley thought, with a strange jolt to her stomach. In instinctive reaction to discomfort, a small giggle escaped her lips.

Ivy didn’t turn. “I was wondering how long you were going to be able to stay quiet. Ten seconds is a new record, I believe.”

“How’d ya know I was here?”

Ivy pointed to the plants, as if that meant anything.

Since it wasn’t a banishment, Harley took it instead as an invitation and skipped into the room, careful not to spill any of her hot chocolate. She hopped up onto the foot of Ivy’s bed and folded her feet underneath herself. “Whatcha workin’ on?”

Ivy didn’t pull her eyes away from the board, but at least Harley could see her face from this angle. “Remember how I told you something’s rotten in Gotham? Politicians being paid off, shell companies popping up, a cabal of anti-environment CEOs meeting more frequently? Something is going on, and I’d like to unravel it.” She tapped the board. “This is the start.”

Harley hummed, gleeful. “Who’re we killin’ first?”

“I’ve got a few ideas,” Ivy said. Reaching up, she tugged a pen out of her hair, causing the pile of it to come tumbling down in crimson waves, loose and bouncy around her shoulders and down to the small of her back. Stray locks She ran her hands through it, shaking it out, chewing her lip as she mulled over her newspaper clippings.

And Harley was enraptured. 

She couldn’t imagine her own hair ever looking like that, falling in long, glossy, bedheaded waves - Ivy put shampoo commercials to shame, the way she could put perfume companies out of business with her natural scent and the way she made an overly-large button down look like black-tie red-carpet formal wear. /And all while planning on murdering a few rich folks. She had an effortless grace to her, a smoothly controlled power that could devastate if ever fully unleashed, kept contained behind nonchalant green eyes and ruby red lips. In that moment Harley could picture Ivy ruling over all of Gotham, or even over all of the world, with an nobility and elegance that Joker could never even dream of.

Harley blinked.  _ Mr. J. _ Not Joker. She didn’t know why she had referred to him as that.  _ Mr. J. _

“Oh!” It was Ivy’s voice, in quiet realization, that pulled Harley from her muddled thoughts. “Wait, did you see-” She whipped around towards Harley for the first time, and then answered her own question when she saw Harley curled around the mug of hot chocolate. “Good, you found it.”

Harley slurped some up, eager for a simple distraction and the sound of her own voice to quiet the others. “It’s very sweet, thank you, Pam-a-lamb. Just -”

Ivy’s pale green cheeks darkened as she looked away. “You’re welcome, Harls. Don’t tell anyone I can be. I don’t want to lose my reputation.”

Harley had been about to say  _ "Just the way I like my hot chocolate" _ before Ivy cut her off with that. She didn’t mean that Ivy was sweet to her - although, as she watched the little curl of Ivy’s smile, the one she thought Harley couldn’t see as she went back to her work, Harley figured that Ivy’s kind of sweet was the way she liked it too.

*

Their life in the penthouse apartment wasn’t all sweetness and light, or expensive, exotic flowers imported from Central America or falling asleep on couches together. Every once in a while, they indulged in hobbies and pastimes that didn’t require spending any of their hard-earned cash or cooking delicious vegan food.

Sometimes, their hobbies skewed quite a bit more violent, in fact.

“Can’t we just firebomb the place?” Harley whined, arms crossed tightly over her chest.

“No.”

Harley pouted. Her red leather jacket, sports bra, and daisy dukes weren’t doing much against the cold, and Ivy had kept them both motionless in an alleyway for several minutes now, staring at the nondescript club across the street. It didn’t even have a sign: just a dark door in the brick wall and a beefy bouncer.

“I know a great Molotov cocktail recipe.”

“Not a terribly complex mixture.”

“Pammmmmm.”

Ivy rounded on her, and Harley jolted back against the brick wall of the alley in surprise. She quickly resolved her face into cool smugness when Ivy stepped close, but Ivy didn’t crack a grin or show any sign that Harley had gotten under her skin at all. She merely had to impress a point.

“I don’t want to kill everyone in there,” she said, low and fast, “I want to leave a very specific message regarding a politician who defunded seventy percent of the eastern seaboard’s climate research. He’s the first one on my list, the most public face of whatever is going on in Gotham, and hopefully, he has links to the others I’m hunting for. This needs to be measured and precise.”

Harley smirked, twirling her bat. “And if some skulls need crackin’...”

Ivy sighed. “Then feel free.”

“I’m ya girl, Pam-a-lamb. Let’s get this creep.”

The bouncer raised his eyebrows at their approach, and when he saw Harley’s bat, he reached into his pocket, but Ivy was faster: she stepped into his space, tilting her head sweetly, and his eyes glazed over.

“You don’t want to stop us, do you?” she purred. “Why wouldn’t you want two gorgeous women like us in there?”

He nodded blankly, opening the door for them. Ivy dragged appreciative fingers over his jawline as she strutted in; Harley followed just behind her, blowing him a kiss and hefting her bat over her shoulder.

It was a strip club, and _ seedy _ didn’t begin to cover it. The lights stayed turned down low to save on both electricity and cleaning costs; grime coated the floor and accumulated in the corners. But no one in the place paid any attention to that, thanks to the dancers far outclassing the accommodations. Between the pretty girls and the low, neon lights, Ivy and Harley slipped in unnoticed and moved along the back of the club.

“This is what politicians are spending our hard-earned tax dollars on?” Harley whispered, nudging a chair that was missing a leg. 

Ivy scanned the scattering of faces turned up at the current dancer. “Our?”

“Okay, other blockheads’ hard earned tax dollars.”

“They do far worse things with that money than spending it on strippers. There he is,” she added, pointing out the middle-aged politician sitting near the stage. Harley stepped forward, but Ivy caught her with a touch on her arm - she pointed out several men sitting around the man, all wearing sunglasses inside. “I’d rather not cause a scene if we can avoid it. They’ll be armed.”

“Pfft. I can take ‘em.”

“He’ll go for a private dance at some point. We’ll wait.”

“How do you know this much about him?” Harley asked. “Been stalkin’ him, sleeping with contacts, gettin’ information?”

“Sleeping with who?” Ivy demanded.

“You were wearin’ a man’s shirt this morning, remember?”

Ivy frowned - and then laughed when she realized what Harley meant. “God knows how old that is. I have dozens, I usually wear them to protect my own clothes from soil when I’m working, Harley. I’ll admit I do take them from...donors who no longer require them. But I don’t have nighttime callers and I definitely don’t borrow their clothes.”

“Then how do you know all this?”

Ivy hesitated, considering. Harley already knew more about her power than most others, barring Batman and those who she would not name but who had been there at the start. But something in Harley’s eager face pulled it out of her. 

“The Green,” she murmured. “Remember the other day in the apartment, when you were touching everything and I could feel it? The Green connects all plant life on the planet; I can access it, commune with nature everywhere.” She pointed to a sad looking fern in the corner. “Even what’s not properly cared for. I’ve seen him here several times.”

In a rare turn of events, Harley absorbed this in silence, putting no cartoon voice to her inner machinations for several minutes until she smirked and said “So that’s how you found me that night in the park.”

“What?”

“You were searchin’ the Green for me and found me in the park!”

“I - no, that’s not what happened.”

“Then how?”

“Harley, focus,” she commanded, drawing herself up more regally in her chair. “We attract enough attention in a place like this as it is, without the bickering.”

Harley obeyed, but it wasn’t long until her smug satisfaction waned and she ended up fidgeting with anxious bloodlust. It always happened when she had a bat in her hands. Searching for something to do, she momentarily quelled her desire for mayhem by reaching over the bar and stealing some beers for them when the bartender wasn’t looking. She handed one to Ivy as they settled into low chairs in a shadowy corner, lit only by a single red bulb above them. Ivy watched the politician like a hawk; Harley, however, turned her attention on the dancer on stage, a crimson-haired beauty with a killer, confident stage presence and a very tiny bikini.

“Pam-a-lamb, you got any dollars?” she asked, dreamily transfixed.

“What? No, Harley, we’re supposed to be keeping a low profile.”

“Bringing a baseball bat to a strip club is low profile, but coming in with no money isn’t?”

“Don’t blame me, I told you to leave it at home!”

Harley pouted again. She went back to watching the dancer. “We should have gone undercover for this,” she said presently, as the girl finished up her performance.

“What do you mean?” Ivy asked.

“I could have been up there!” Harley said. “It would have been way more fun. I distract him up there, lure him back, then you strangle him with your plants. I could totally do it, you should see me dance at nightclubs.”

“You can’t -” Ivy’s voice choked off in her throat as Harley extended a leg upwards and she leaned back in her chair, exposing her toned abs with a seductive smirk. She perfectly matched the ending poses of the dancer on the stage, without even needing to look twice at her. Her bone-white skin shined under the low, red light, adding an ethereal shimmer to it, while the shadows deepened the cut of her muscles and the dark depths of her blue eyes. She was heavenly and sinful and otherworldly, all at once.

And she seemed to sense the way Ivy’s mind had suddenly gone blank. “Gymnast, remember?” she reminded her. “C’mon, it’s a great plan.”

And Ivy actually seemed to be considering the plan, or at least, considering something, as she stared at Harley for a few frozen seconds. But then she shook her head, forcing her attention back to the politician with a laugh that was part amusement, part resignation.. “You are something else, Harley.”

“Got that right. And you know what? Tomorrow night, we’re going out.”

“Out?” 

“Dancing. Drinking. Girl night.”

“Harley,” she began, but Harley pouted again, leaning in with a plaintive whine.

“C’mon, Red! We can celebrate killing this guy, it would be so much fun. You need to loosen up anyway, like me.” She flexed backward again, arching her back.

“You’ve got a few things loose,” Ivy grumbled, but it wasn’t a no, and Harley was delighted. Before she could make any other grand plans, Ivy laid a hand on her arm and nodded to the front of the club, where the politician was standing up and gesturing to one of his hired guards. He had selected the red-head. “There we go. I’ll take him.”

She stood up, but before she could move, two of the politician’s guards took up defensive postures in front of the doorway leading to the bank of private rooms, and four others followed him inside. Ivy bit her lip, considering her options. Walking up alone would attract attention; she could slink in the dimly-lit corners of the strip club just fine, but the guards were in the line of sight of too many people and using her powers on them would make things too obvious. The club was also crowded enough by other patrons who looked far too shifty to warrant starting an out and out fight. She had a feeling that the guards weren’t the only ones with weapons or a penchant for violence.

“Skull crackin’ time?” Harley suggested with a shrug.

Ivy looked over her, slowly raising an eyebrow as she worked it all out.

“I’ve got a better idea. Give me your jacket and bat.”

Ten minutes later, Harley was wearing a Cheshire cat grin, and not much else.

There were three reasons behind it, not counting the psychopathy. One, she had donned a kick-ass dancer’s outfit stolen from backstage, tiny leather shorts and a lace bralette sparkling with conveniently placed crystals. Two, she had successfully negotiated for a night out on the town in exchange for helping Ivy now. And three, this was exactly what she wanted in the first place: to go undercover.

Ivy would have attracted too much attention strolling up to the private rooms on her own. But Harley moved in this world comfortably, to the beat of the bass, like she not only belonged there, but ran the damn place - when Harley prowled up to the guards in front of the bank of private rooms, leading a demure Ivy by the hand, there was no suspicion in the eyes that roved over them. Ivy, with Harley’s jacket slung around her shoulders, kept her eyes down, the picture of angelic innocence; Harley regarded the guards with brazen impatience. They didn’t budge.

“She’s paying,” Harley barked, jerking a thumb over her shoulder.

“She can wait.”

“No she can’t. You don’t work here, I do. She’s paying a lot.”

“You won’t work for a while if you keep mouthing off to me.”

Harley narrowed her eyes - the act began to break, something swirling under the surface. Ivy sensed it; she laid a reassuring hand on the small of Harley’s back, and the other girl calmed under her touch once more.

“Fine,” Harley sing-songed. “I’ll just have to let my next client know the reason for the hold-up. He’s a journalist for The Times, and one of my favorite regulars, smartest writer ya ever saw. It’s on your head!”

As she turned away, she saw the two guards look at each other.

“Fine,” one said. “Don’t say a damn word about this.”

“You can be next,” Harley cooed at him, as they stood aside to let her and Ivy pass.

Four more guards clustered around a door at the far end of the hallway. When Ivy and Harley entered, they put their hands on their weapons, but one of the men from outside leaned in and waved them off. “Don’t make a big deal about it,” he wanted the other guards, then, to Harley and Ivy, he added, “And you two, make it quick.”

Harley pulled Ivy into a room three doors down from the politician.

“That was easy,” Ivy muttered as the door shut behind them.

“Toldja, I’m good,” Harley replied. “Jeez, how do they work in here?”

She and Ivy stood chest to chest in the tight room, so close that their breath and body heat mingled in the space between them. Harley had to tilt her chin up to look at Ivy; she stayed in character, a smile teasing at her lips. She jerked her head to the single armchair beside them - if one were to sit down, they’d have much more room to maneuver - and for a moment, Ivy’s eyes were far away as she looked at Harley, another world entirely from their upcoming assassination and undercover job. Then she shook her head, and the look was gone, with a quiet half-laugh as she shook away whatever mental image had overcome her. 

“We have a job to do,” she reminded her, voice as tight as the walls on all sides of them. 

“C’mon, it would be funny!” Harley tried.

“I don’t want to spend anymore time in this place than we have to. It smells terrible.”

“I only smell you; pine and citrus tonight?”

Ivy cracked a small, reluctant smile, but stayed firm. “Don’t get distracted. Come on.”

She shrugged off Harley’s leather jacket from around her shoulders and leaned over to fish Harley’s real clothes and the baseball bat from where they had been hidden in the sleeves. Harley grew bored with waiting even a few seconds; her hips shifted back and forth to the low thrum of music coming from the main club, just in front of Ivy’s face. Ivy paused, her eyes locked on Harley’s waist. It took her a moment to drag her attention back up Harley’s body, over the miles and miles of skin, and by the time their eyes connected, Harley’s sparkling with mischief and Ivy’s stony, she had managed to set a look of disapproval firmly into her face.

“What did I just say?”

“It’s hard not to be distracted with your phero-things, Red.”

“I’m not -” she paused, swallowed, took a breath. “You shouldn’t sense anything. I’m not using them right now.”

Harley’s eyes widened ever so slightly, and her lips parted. But another word would open several doors that they could not afford to open right now, especially not here and especially not with Harley wearing that, so Ivy shoved the bat and clothes into her hands and stepped back against the wall, inhaling another deep, steeling breath. 

“Okay,” she said quickly before Harley could open her mouth. “These walls are thin. I can pull them apart, take him by surprise. You got the guys outside?”

Harley’s bloodlust returned quickly, thankfully, and she flashed a smile like a knife. “Sounds perfect. Go get ‘em, Pamela.”

They timed it to the beat of the bass in the club, Ivy ripping a larger hole in the cheap wall with each heavy boom and Harley tapping her bat against the floor to keep the rhythm. When Ivy made it through to the next room, just one wall separating her and the politician, Harley offered her a salute.

“Meet ya in thirty seconds.”

She swung out of the booth and skipped down the hall towards the guards, high heeled boots clicking to get their attention and her bat held behind her back. Her appearance didn’t alarm them - what’s a dancer to a bunch of big strong guards? They even eyed her hungrily as she approached. But when she got too close, the nearest guard stepped forward, holding up a hand while lowering the other to his gun.

“Excuse me,” she called, bubblegum sweet. “Would you happen to know where the nearest hospital is?”

It got a few chuckles. “Jesus, what did you do to the poor girl in there?” the man with the gun cracked, gruff.

“Oh, she’s fine. In fact, she’s the finest girl in this place,” Harley said. “I’m asking for you!”

The bat whistled through the air and divested his lower jaw from his skull, and he dropped with a shout, the look of confusion still in his eyes. The big strong tough men went for their guns before thinking to move out of range and Harley was on them, smashing one with an elbow to the nose and another in the groin with the bat. They didn’t drop as easily, but she relished the fight.

The shouting attracted the attention of the politician inside the private room, midway through his dance; he shoved the dancer off of his lap, but before he could get to his feet or even so much as open his mouth to call out to his guards, the wall of the room splintered apart and Ivy stepped in, graceful and casual as the dancers on stage. She nodded to the other girl in the room.

“Go ahead, sweetheart. You’re done here. I’ll see that you and your coworkers are very well taken care of.”

The girl grabbed what little clothing she had and ran from the room - through the hole Ivy had created, given the sounds of Harley’s brawl outside.

Ivy stepped closer to the politician, rooting him to his chair with fear. She bent down, eye-to-eye, and touched his chin. 

“You’ve been busy,” she said, leading him. His eyes went glassy. “You’ve had six secret meetings in the past two weeks. Would you like to give me the names and companies you’ve been working with?”

The man reached wordlessly into his pocket, and handed over a small black book. She flipped through it before tucking it away.

“Cliche,” Ivy said. “But I appreciate it. I’d kiss you, but that would be too easy.” With that, he snapped out of his trance, recoiling in fear of her, but there was nowhere to go in the tiny room, and she took him by the throat.

“I have very powerful friends,” he stammered, “they’ll make you hurt for this.”

“Mhmm,” Ivy said, nodding along with him, trying not to smile. “I can’t wait to meet all of your friends.” She leaned closer and blew a warm breath over her palm - six tiny seeds sprouted and began to grow, along with his panic.

“What the hell is this?” he demanded.

“Grassroots activism.”

The roots flowed out of the seeds in her palm, curling tendrils that slithered into his mouth to stifle his screaming as they grew larger and larger. He was dead within seconds, but they continued to wrap around his body, inside and out. She stepped back to admire her work as the branches and roots sprouted out of his body, lifting him out of his chair in a grisly green tableau, his eyes still wide and staring. She dug into her pocket for a small note card, which she left on the body.

_ “Now that he’s no longer in the way, feel free to restore the funding he cut.” _

The power of it coursed through her, a welcome relief from the creeping, nagging feeling of yearning that had taken up residence in her veins as of late. A desire deferred tended to fester in the dark unacknowledged recesses of her mind, but wrenching men apart and driving them into insanity had always provided the cool clarity that she needed in life. She even let herself smile at the feeling. Then:

_ “Ivy!" _

Harley’s voice. Panicked. All of her smugness vanished.

She threw her body through the door. A beast of a man had Harley by the throat, holding her up so that her feet dangled uselessly - Ivy’s momentum carried her through a punch to his jaw, and Harley dropped to the floor, gasping. Ivy had the man strung up with vines before he could recover and with a flick of her hand, they snapped his neck.

“They got friends coming in,” Harley warned, pointing as she tried to stand.

Ivy turned as two more men came in with guns raised; she smashed them together, before releasing a dusting of poisonous spores from her fingertips that they began to choke on. Easy work. They hadn’t even hit the floor before she was back to Harley, wrapping strong, gentle fingers around her arm and lifting her up from the floor.

“Are you okay?” she demanded.

“Cold-clocked me,” Harley muttered, face red from embarrassment but growing redder around her eye, where she had been hit. “Didn’t hurt, but it was rude! Never hit a lady when she ain’t lookin’.”

But despite her righteous anger, Harley didn’t get her balance beneath her and when she tried to stand without Ivy’s support, she swayed dangerously on the spot. Ivy wrapped an arm around her. 

“I got you.”

“Wait!” Harley released Ivy for just a moment - she bent down, rifling through the pockets of the dead and unconscious guards. With a triumphant shout, she held up a wad of cash. “My dollars!”

_ “Harley...” _

But Harley staggered into the private room for more, and let out a delighted gasp when she saw the politician strung up with flowers bursting through his ribcage. Where Harley couldn’t see her, Ivy blushed. 

“Wow - I didn’t know we were bein’ artistic, Ive! I left mine all sloppy on the ground.”

“Harley, we need to go.” The music in the club cut off and angry, confused shouting filled the sudden silence. This was enough to prompt Harley to come back; she stumbled out to Ivy, wrapping herself around her. But this time, to ensure Harley didn’t escape again, Ivy lifted her off her feet.

They ran for it. They crashed through the chaos in the club, angry men jumping up from chairs and sending them flying. Weapons were coming out, flashes of guns and batons and broken bottles, everyone ready for a fight but with no idea against who. The dancers had all come out on stage to see what the commotion was; as Ivy carried Harley past the stage, Harley flung her thousands of single dollars into the air. The bills cascaded down like confetti over the women on stage, and between the strobe lights, the bodies, the raining cash, no one could see straight enough to make a grab at the two women who had just killed a politician and his entire entourage.

Harley and Ivy escaped into the night and Ivy carried Harley for far longer than was strictly necessary. The farther they got from the club, the more the warmth spread between them, the thrill and adrenaline of success and getting away...mostly clean. The night felt endless, their possibilities felt endless. She was unaccustomed to celebration - this was a necessary job, not something she took joy in - but she found herself beaming down at the girl in her arms, breathless and enamored with the moment. Harley clung to her, effervescent, arms tight and full of love, because that was what Harley did best: she clung, tightly, desperately, to small moments of light in her darkness.

Ivy would make sure she had nothing but light.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yeah we get sappy sometimes, but only occasionally. we'll balance it out in the next bit. not with angst though! not yet, at least. as for plot? who knows!


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this is wildly, criminally self-indulgent. I apologize in advance.

Ivy pinned the last scrap of paper to the board and stepped back to admire her morning’s worth of work. Clean, simple, and yet intensive, not unlike her old university work. It had been no small feat to keep her composure as she laid out the framework of the latest corporate conspiracy to poison the government and wring dry the land - her land - and several times she had had to resist lining the board with red string like a basement-dwelling conspiracy theorist. A tangle of red string would only make everything messier, complicated, emotional, and she would not allow it to sully her plans. Ivy had a ruthless drive: she had sorted through newspaper articles, press releases, and business registries for names in the politician’s little black book, and those that she could identify, she lined up on the top of the board like targets on a shooting range.

The CEO of a pharmaceutical company. A geneticist. A few land developers. Bankers. Lobbyists. Shady financiers. Based on the swaths of land cleared in the Amazon and a few small conflicts started in developing countries, Ivy assumed they were after some sort of organic chemical derived from a mass amounts of rare plants that existed in only a few countries. These disparate groups had teamed up, leveraging wealth and power - financed by the Gotham wealthy, the land developers in these countries poisoned the land to buy it for cheap, the pharma company sourced the plant life from the cleared land, the land developers built on it to turn a profit, with a healthy dose of murder and blackmail sprinkled in. Standard scum-of-the-earth billionaire tactics, but what interested Ivy the most was the endgame. 

What exactly was being produced in Gotham? Who was organizing it all? Why?

It went deep into the government and power brokers in Gotham, on both sides of the law. It had an unsavory feeling to it that she couldn’t shake. This was only the beginning of something big.

She was an ecoterrorist. Apparently, her existence had not terrified them into behaving properly. She would have to step up her game, and she would enjoy it.

The only itch in the back of her mind, distracting from her goal, was Harley. Ivy hadn’t left her room this morning, but she had heard Harley puttering about early, clinking cereal bowls and giggling at the TV, and then...nothing. Every time Ivy found a new name or connection, she had paused, listening for some hint of her, but for three hours now, the apartment had been silent.

She could have reached through the plants, searched the apartment without leaving her room, the way she had found Harley that night in the park weeks ago - she had been checking the Green for some sign of her every night, purely out of habit after months and months without a sign - and jolted in bed when she realized where Harley was. She could have done the same now, but she held back. It would be an invasion of privacy; a mar of the trust they were trying to build. Ivy usually maintained a finely tuned cognizance of the flowers and plants within her domain but from the moment she brought Harley home, she had shut off her connection to the plants in Harley’s bedroom, and had even lessened her awareness of everything in their shared living space. She wanted Harley to breathe, to grow on her own, without constant surveillance.

And so she waited. Noon came and went without a sound in the apartment.

Ivy’s trepidation began to rise in her chest.

She slipped out of her bedroom. At the far end of the hall, Harley’s door stood partially ajar; Ivy approached and knocked, but when she peered inside, she found the room empty. As was the living room, kitchen, balcony, and every other room in the penthouse apartment. Harley was gone, and it wasn’t until Ivy looked at the day’s newspaper on the kitchen table that she began to realize why.

_“Joker hijacks school bus - Batman saves schoolchildren on 5th Street Bridge”_

Of course. She saw his name and went running right back. The trepidation in her chest became a bitterness that rose up in her throat; tasting poison like this was unwelcome and unfamiliar.

The planning board in her bedroom would take adjusting. Ivy felt some relief at the thought of being able to throw herself into that work for the rest of the day, but it was tempered by frustration that she had to do it at all. She would not let another slip-up like the museum happen, even if some jobs were better or easier with two people. She didn’t need to be saved, or to rely on anyone, or -

The front door opened - she had the sharp spikes of a crown of thorns branch in her hands in an instant, ready for whoever walked in, but even as the spikes grew, she recognized Harley’s footsteps.

“Red?” 

Harley swung around the corner, jubilant, but stopped short when she saw the thorns in Ivy’s hands - they receded as the tension released from Ivy’s body, to be replaced with something like shame. Harley just grinned and asked, “Wow, can you make me one of those?”

The rush of relief that came as the bitterness in her mouth abated felt like intoxication. Harley was fine. She’d tied her hair up in her usual pigtails, clean and relaxed; save for the recent black eye from the strip club, the bruises and cuts that had marred her body upon their reunion had begun to fade; she moved lightly and loosely, no longer weighed down with fear and madness or strung out on him. She was a flower, reaching for the sun, blooming.

Ivy couldn’t help a smile, though she tried to keep her voice rough. “Jesus, Harley, where have you been?”

“Shoppin’,” Harley replied with a shrug. “Look what I got!” She lifted a pair of potted flowers out of one of the shopping bags: one with black petals, one with red. She held them out for Ivy’s appraisal. “Pretty, huh?”

Ivy examined both plants with delicate hands, while Harley watched her with satisfied excitement. The flowers seemed to curl up to Ivy’s fingers, as if magnetized. “Good choices, Harls,” she said. “Black irises, and red canna lilies. How very O’Keeffe of you.”

“What’s _hokeef?"_

“Nothing,” Ivy said, stepping back and clearing her throat. She nodded at another shopping bag. “Where else did your adventures take you?”

Harley bit her lip. “Well...listen.”

Ivy’s brow went up.

“I read the little book you stole from that strip club guy.” She flinched, waiting for the negative reaction, but Ivy remained perfectly calm.

“Senator,” she corrected Harley evenly.

“Same thing. I recognized one of the names, he’s a real piece of work, a rich investment guy. He works with - with Joker. I know where to find him, where his favorite spots are.” 

Ivy’s eyes widened - then narrowed. “Wait, Joker works with a straight-laced banker?”

“Okay, so maybe he robbed him once or twice. Point stands.” Harley reached into the second of her shopping bags, and this time drew out a slinky black dress. “I’m gonna guess you have a few numbers like this, huh, Red? I figured we could have a ladies night, with a little rich guy murderin’ along the way! You did promise we’d go out...” 

Ivy’s face warmed with her smile. The answer was yes. Even if Harley didn’t know anything about her target list, the answer was yes before she even really asked, because Ivy had agreed to do this back at the strip club and she was true to her word, and also because it was hard to deny the plea in Harley’s face when she stood in front of Ivy holding up a brand new dress. But before Ivy could reply and agree, Harley’s eyes slid past her - to the kitchen table. To the newspaper. Ivy followed her gaze, already knowing where it would lead.

“Plus...I really wanna go out tonight and not have to think,” Harley admitted.

Ivy stepped sideways and broke into Harley’s line of sight. “Then we’re going out. And after we put him down, we’ll have fun.” Come hell or high water.

*

When they strode into the bar, dressed to the nines, Ivy took one look at the place and stopped so shortly that even Harley startled.

“Harley, are you serious?”

Harley cocked her head. “Never. Why?”

Ivy waved a hand around at what must have been the dingiest, tiniest little dive bar in all of Gotham, if not the country. Not one of the sleepy, down-on-their-luck barflies had any relation to the drug conspiracy she was trying to chase down.

But when Harley realized the source of the disdain on Ivy’s face, she took her hand, erasing all of Ivy’s thoughts of leaving. “C’mon,” she urged. “The night’s just starting! We’ll warm up and then get to the good stuff later. What, you don’t do foreplay, Pammy?”

That was the thing with Harley, though: she only had one speed. She didn’t warm up. She hit the gas, tires squealing, and raced towards the inevitable. Ivy tried to slow her but the girl was not to be dissuaded; by her second shot, Harley had turned up the music in the bar; by her third, she had somehow procured a white-snakeskin jacket with sleeves too long for her arms. Ivy had only looked away for a second, to slide into an isolated corner booth, and somehow Harley had ended up stealing a jacket, whether it was off an unconscious body or an unwilling victim. She could only imagine. But as Harley slammed down another shot, no jacket-less man came to accost her, so Ivy relaxed, content to watch Harley wreak her specific brand of havoc in a little dive with sleepy drinkers who were not at all prepared for her. The girl was a whirlwind. She danced. She made friends. She laughed and spilled her drinks all over her new friends, losing them as quickly as she gained them.

Ivy couldn’t help but smile. Harley was a bright spot in the dirty little bar. She had dressed up, 

in high heels and a high hemline, flashy jewelry and dark eyeshadow - in fact, it was the first and only time Ivy had ever seen anyone turn a black eye into a makeup look, but she pulled it off in a way that only she could. 

Ivy was beginning to realize that Harley had a knack for turning ugly, painful things beautiful. The bar didn’t look so bad either, with her lighting it up.

As she was watching Harley, Harley was watching her: Ivy took another sip of her drink only to discover she had already finished it. Before she could set the glass down, Harley swooped in, depositing two new drinks on the table and leaning in, nose to nose, with a voracious grin on her face.

“Havin’ fun?”

“I am.”

_“Liar.”_

Ivy opened her mouth to protest, but closed it again when Harley arched an eyebrow, daring her to challenge. And while Ivy could have risen to that challenge with an ease that Harley never would have expected, it was easier just to demur and stay quiet. Harley was going to do whatever she wanted in response anyway.

“You can’t have fun,” Harley continued, “at least not until you take care of all of your self-assigned responsibilities. I don’t know if you can even get drunk, but that’s besides the point, because willingly not allowing yourself to enjoy anything without working to deserve it first reflects a poor-self image, a self-conceptualization that your worth is dependent on your production, an issue stemming from childhood and likely exacerbated by a generalized anxiety or stress disorder.”

Harley smirked even as Ivy’s glare darkened. 

“Fuck off, Quinn.”

But she didn’t. She smiled. Waited. Despite Ivy’s best efforts, Harley knew it was only a challenge instead of a dismissal and she was going to push her boundaries, test how far she could take Ivy before she truly snapped back. 

Ivy wouldn’t give her the satisfaction. To cool down, she took a sip of her drink to pull herself back from the edge.

For the record, Ivy could drink and feel the effects of intoxication if she wanted; moreover, she could release spores that would drive everyone in this bar into a frenetic mania, better than any alcohol or drugs they could come up with. She could have detailed all of that out. She could have detailed out how she actually was enjoying watching Harley have fun. Instead, she looked into Harley’s blue eyes, crystal clear and piercing, somehow more sane and sparkling than when she wasn’t drinking, and selected a calm, coldly threatening tone.

“So, already psychoanalyzing me after only three shots?” Ivy asked simply, once she had composed herself.

“You’re the one who wanted to talk about neuroscience, Pamela.” 

Harley flopped into the seat across from Ivy and grabbed one of the two glasses. She raised it to her lips - but it didn’t make it all the way, as Ivy reached out and put her fingers on the rim. She leaned in.

“Yes, Harley, I can’t relax. I am genuinely glad you’re enjoying yourself because I do want that for you tonight, and I would like to enjoy it with you, but until I bleed the life out of the banker tonight, you could say I will continue to be stressed about his blase destruction of millions of acres of natural land and plant life.”

Harley’s manic grin didn’t fade, her pink tongue flashing across the edge of her teeth as she glanced down at Ivy’s lips and then back up.

“You’re really somethin’ when you talk like that, Pammy.” With a feint, Harley grabbed the other drink and downed half of it before Ivy could stop her. “Okay, I’m all loosened up. Let’s go.”

*

Killing the banker presented an easier job than killing the politician - he had a cabal of like-minded young finance friends, rather than an armed escort - and in a far glossier setting than a rundown strip club. With the way they looked, Harley and Ivy had no problem walking through the front doors of a dark, smoky, wood-paneled lounge across the street and up ten stories from Harley’s little dive. They headed for the bar, first, to scope everything out.

“All those rich guys, no originality,” Harley muttered, after ordering martinis for her and Ivy. “They got noodle arms, I can tell. Let’s just smash ‘em up.”

“It would be easy,” Ivy agreed. “But after leaving a message with the politician, any more obvious displays will likely bring Batman down on us, and I’d like to avoid unnecessary complications.”

Harley whined and crossed her arms over her chest. Ivy smiled at her, reaching out to smooth Harley’s hair behind her ear.

“Take a breath, darling. If you’re going to help me with all of this, then the more chances we have to complete our work unperturbed, the more art you can make with them.”

Her hand lingered on the side of Harley’s head. So, maybe a little of the warmth she felt was from the cheap alcohol at the previous bar. She could admit that.

Ivy was still working out the subtlest plan of attack, and nursing her martini, when the banker and his friends rose from their table and threw a fistful of hundred dollar bills on the table.

“Damn,” she hissed. 

Harley, who had not been paying a lick of attention, looked around in confusion.

“Wha?”

“He’s leaving - we might have to go your route, take them all out in an alley somewhere.” 

Ivy jumped to her feet, taking Harley by the hand and leading her out. Not that Harley needed urging - the possibility of violence between drinks had her grinning like a fool - but Ivy wanted to keep her anchored, keep her focused, so they could get this over with and she could give in to the nagging temptation stirring in her belly, the desire to enjoy the night with even ten percent of Harley’s enthusiasm. It certainly was infectious.

To the disappointment of both of them, the group of men had enough sense between them to avoid alleys and dark shadows in their fancy clothes; Harley and Ivy trailed at a distance, heads down, weaving through the crowd and keeping their fingers laced together so they didn’t get separated. Just as Harley began to lose interest and Ivy began to lose patience, the group ducked into their next spot for the night: a much higher intensity nightclub, the dull thrum of house music pounding from within.

Ivy balked. Harley gasped with delight.

“Ohmigod, Red, come on,” she said, tugging Ivy forward, “we can dance, and I know they’re going to have so many drinks in bright colors, and it’ll be so easy to kill him with no one noticing in one big sweaty crowd!”

*

“To...saving the planet!”

She had to jump in front of Ivy, who was watching the rich guys across the club like a leopard in the jungle. She considered it her duty to make sure Ivy had fun - and besides, they couldn’t kill the bankers yet, anyway. Ivy blinked and looked down at the latest round in Harley’s hands.

“Harls, this is the third drink you’ve celebrated imminent murder with. We’ll be unconscious before we can do anything at this rate.”

“So you can get drunk! Good! And we’re celebratin’ botany,” Harley corrected her, as she handed her something neon green in a highball glass and hopped onto the bar seat next to her. “See?”

So long as Ivy kept accepting whatever Harley passed her, Harley could keep coming up with toasts - she could do this all night, or until this swanky place kicked them out, but even then she’d just smash a few windows and they’d move on to the next bar.

So long as Ivy kept smiling at her like this.

With Mr - with Joker, smiling and laughter meant baring teeth as a last resort against this crazy world, and for Harley specifically, it meant safety. If he was laughing, smiling, she was okay. She lived for it, and because of it. 

But Ivy...Ivy smiled at her, not next to her or because of her, and it made her feel a million times better than the dreamy little buzz these watered down drinks had been giving her. She was effervescent, sitting pretty on a bar stool with the dizzy lights from the dance floor spinning over her skin. She’d already threatened away four different sleazeballs with nothing more than a glare; she was a Queen no one dared crossed, regal and dangerous. A long time ago some broad named Harleen Quinzel had gotten into psychology partially to get inside people, open them up and see what made them tick. Ivy would have been a prime candidate - ice cold and regal and terrifying. But Harley had no need, now. Ivy was the first person in a long time that Harley didn’t want to break, because every time she gave Harley one of those little smiles she had never seen her give anyone else, it felt like she was lowering those walls just for her. Breaking herself open. Willingly. Harley didn’t need to fight or earn it or take it. Ivy just gave. Everything was warm and happy and none of it hurt.

It was a nice change.

It also felt pretty good to be the only one allowed close to her; Harley took the opportunity to lean her head on Ivy shoulder, and with a single whiff of that intoxicating perfume, she was spilling her guts.

“I think you’re my best friend, Pammy,” Harley said.

Ivy stiffened and panic broke through Harley’s haze - that was wrong, she shouldn’t have - 

But then Ivy relaxed. “I’m glad. Friends are good. You’re my first in a long, long time.”

“How long?”

“How long for you?”

“Mmm.” She quirked an eyebrow. “We’re playing you show me yours if I show you mine?”

She always tried to make Pammy blush, too. It was just harder than making her smile. At least, she hadn’t yet found enough little tricks to work her way into that part of Ivy’s mind. But she was working on it.

Instead, she gave Ivy a break, nudging her in the ribs with a giggle and downing half of her glass in one big gulp. As she brought it down, a waitress in a real tiny outfit sauntered by, with a tray of white-silver sparkly drinks and Harley nearly slopped the rest of her drink out of her glass in her excitement; she gasped, turning to Ivy, who was already shaking her head.

“Absolutely not.” She raised the neon green toxic thing Harley had given her, still mostly full. “I don’t plan on sleeping anywhere but my own bed, Harley,” she chided gently, but her eyes were smiling. “You should too.”

“Sleep in your bed?”

There - she thought, maybe? Maybe it had been a trick of the light or maybe Harley was just hitting the bottle so hard it had started hitting back, but the color in her cheeks changed.

Her voice betrayed nothing. “You should plan on sleeping in your own bed, as in making it home.” Then, after a pause, she sighed and relented. “But we may still be here a while. Our target thinks he’s too cool to dance or order more drinks from the bar - I’ll wait and keep watch. You can go dance, sober up before your next drink.”

That, she could do. On her own terms. Harley slid off the barstool and skipped toward the dance floor, grabbing one of the drinks from the tray as she went and flashing a sinful smirk at Ivy before she vanished into the crowd.

Ivy would learn: never tell her what to do.

*

The fact that her gaze continued to seek out Harley on the dance floor instead of staying focused on the banker like it should have, became very frustrating very quickly.

She blamed the alcohol. It lowered her guard. Every once in a while, like after a glass of wine, she experienced that unpleasant reminder of the small, leftover fragments of humanity that plagued her, the hormones and chemicals that had bonded her to Harley in their time shared together. These were the sorts of human connections she avoided for exactly this reason: they got in the way.

And yet, she found herself surprised by how much that small, human part of her enjoyed watching Harley dance.

Not the curves of her body or the way she moved or anything so lurid, not in the way others in the bar ogled her - though Ivy appreciated aesthetics probably more than most people - but in the newfound joy Harley had. When they had first met, Harley’s smiles curved like the sharp side of a sickle, mean and ready to hurt, but now, in small bursts and pockets where she no longer had to defend herself or look for weak points or escape routes, she radiated a relentless, dizzying exuberance. A bird set free from her cage, soaring above the clouds -

She grimaced. She was starting to sound like Zsasz. She took a heavy drink to wash the taste of that thought away.

Back to the banker. She cooled her temperature with an icy focus and fury, envisioning all the ways she could kill him. She couldn’t get close enough unnoticed for a kiss, on brand as it may be. Tearing him limb from limb felt like an appropriate way to exorcise the heat in her veins, but it also would attract too much attention. It would feel nice, but she knew the best solution was the vial of toxic spores hidden in the lining of her dress -

Harley was dancing with someone. Ivy became very aware of her heartbeat in her chest. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up. She couldn’t see clearly through the crowd, but it was some man, a taller man, some worthless Gotham citizen trying his luck...after all that Harley had been through, some man’s hands on her...Ivy wanted to fly into the crowd and throw him back, make sure she was okay...

Harley caught her watching. Ivy looked away quickly, but not before Harley’s grin lit up the dance floor like a spotlight. Ivy felt its heat on her. She took a long pull of her cold drink.

The banker. He was scanning the crowd too, the dance floor and the bar. On the move? She blistered with impatience.

Her head spun. Too many neon colored drinks. Damn it, Harley...

Harley was closer now, arm slung around a girl, the new beneficiary of that million watt smile. Ivy ran an eye over the girl, looking for any threat.

The banker - the banker was gone.

She hissed a stream of obscenities under the pounding music as her world snapped into crystal clarity. The banker was gone; his friends still sat at his table; he hadn’t left - Ivy searched the dance floor with new vigor, trying to ignore Harley dancing closer on her periphery, looking for him so that she could get the hell out of here -

A bright red drink appeared on the bar beside her. 

“Harley, not now-”

“Why not now?”

A man’s voice. She spun to find the banker leaned against the bar with the most idiotic grin on his face, and Ivy’s jaw nearly fell open at the sheer audacity of a piece of meat to look so smug wandering into the lion’s den. He eyed her hungrily.

“You’ve been watching me all night,” he began, lowering his gaze. “Can I buy you a drink?”

“You can’t afford me.”

He scoffed. “I’ve got a net worth of ten million.”

“Then I overestimated.” She humored him, leaning in, getting close. “Turns out you can’t afford the price of my conversation, let alone my company.”

She reached out, pulled him in for a kiss, her poison burning on her lips. She wrenched back the instant she knew his fate was sealed.

“Tell me something,” she whispered urgently as the sanity slipped out of him. “You’re one of several investors in a shady new project with roots in South and Central America. What is it?”

“Jussa name,” he slurred. “Sposed to make us all rich. Friend of a friend promised money and future opportunities, just kept calling the project Cinder.”

“Cinder? That’s it? What cliche spy novel-”

He shrugged, and fell towards her.

“Hey, hey, what the hell do ya think you’re doin’?” Harley flew into the banker in a pink, white, and baby blue blur, shoving him back and planting herself in front of Ivy. “Ya think you can grope my friend and then kiss her and ya won’t have ta answer to me?”

The banker was already losing it, his eyes sliding out of focus as he stared at Harley.

“Harls,” Ivy said, with quiet amusement in her voice.

“Ive, I got this, this bozo doesn’t know what’s comin’ to him if he-”

The banker’s face began to turn pale.

Harley froze. She looked back at Ivy, then to the banker. “Oh.”

“Yeah.”

“This is the guy.” 

He crumpled to the floor.

“Was the guy,” Ivy said flatly.

Harley clapped, giddy. “Oh, I have always wanted to watch you do that to someone, this is the best. You are the best!”

“Thank you, darling,” Ivy replied, feeling her cheeks warm. The patrons around them were starting to notice the man on the ground, though, so Ivy took Harley’s hand. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

“Wait, I was makin’ friends-”

Ivy’s stomach twisted. “We’ll find you new ones at the next place. We can’t stay.”

She hadn’t particularly cared for Harley’s choices in this club, but she wouldn’t ever tell her that. Or question it herself. Some things are better left unanswered.

*

If Harley didn’t know any better she’d think Ivy had a thing for killing. Everyone has that itch they need to scratch, a need to be satisfied. Once you get your hit, you relax and the urge starts building anew. Because after a night of worrying and watching and planning, once Ivy had killed the banker with fabulous style, she unwound that gorgeous, insanely tightly coiled body of hers.

And took shots.

This bar was darker and dirtier and much more fun, and Harley couldn’t believe that Ivy was playing right into it, but she didn’t question it: she threw her arm around her best friend and held her tight. Ivy was smiling, only at her, always at her, a beam of light through the fog, guiding her back every time her brain got too hazy and her eyes slid out of focus. She wouldn’t dance, though - Harley was trying to keep track of the shots so she would know how many it took last time but she lost count when she ran out of fingers on the hand that wasn’t holding Ivy’s - so Harley danced by herself. People asked to join them. She turned them down. She watched Pamela.

And then, her eyes alighted on a pool table and she heard slot machine bells ringing in her head.

She stumbled back toward Ivy.

“Look, look look look,” she said, pointing. A pool table and a dozen burly, bearded bikers standing around it.

“What’re you thinking?” Ivy asked, halfway between encouragement and warning.

“Gonna...gonna make some money.”

Ivy laughed. “You’re going to hustle them?”

“No? I was going to hit them with the pool cue and take their wallets.”

Ivy laughed harder and a sleepy smile spread over Harley’s face at the sound. Better than smiling and almost better than blushing. She loved making people laugh.

*

It didn’t take much to convince Harley to play pool instead of whack a mole, but as Harley flitted among the men twice her size, Ivy still watched carefully from a distance for the inevitable boredom to set in. With boredom came blood and she didn’t like the thought of having to traipse back out into the cold to find another bar.

She would, for Harley. Purity and vitality. That was what she loved about her. This brought it out in her.

God, she was drunk. Hot-skinned, numb face, tingling fingers, spinning thoughts, drunk.

She only looked away for a second. Or maybe she never looked away, but her mind went somewhere else entirely when she watched Harley line up her next shot. 

Either way...the sound of glass breaking brought her back to reality.

Everything happened very quickly and very slowly.

The man Harley had spilled the drink on spun around. She ducked and rolled beneath the pool table, hitting the guy behind her with the cue as she went. Both men locked eyes and launched at each other. Someone flipped the pool table. Harley somersaulted away and the pool cue flipped with her, whacking shins across the floor, spreading the brawl like a cloud of fear toxin. The bar was engulfed in half a second, Harley gleefully fueling it by throwing blind punches as she darted around and grabbing wallets when she could, all under the cover of rock music and cheap cigarette smoke.

Ivy jumped to her feet - the world rocked dangerously around her and threatened to tip her onto the ground and she needed a moment to steady herself, but her eyes never left that wild blonde storm of chaos. She lurched into the fray, found Harley by instinct alone, wrapped an arm around her waist, ducked both of them from a hay maker punch, and threw herself towards the door.

Harley’s laughter followed them all the way down the street, echoing in Ivy’s head until she thought she was hearing voices too, lost her mind for and with this girl.

“One more, one more, c’mon, please Pammy?” She gave her best pout, her best whine, her most plaintive, pressing fingers around Ivy’s waist.

*

Which is how they ended up in another dance club, more pulsing lights and sweating bodies and bone-vibrating bass levels, a hedonistic, dizzying euphoria. She didn’t need to drink any more. Everything else was intoxicating enough.

Not least, Harley leaning on her. “C’mon, let’s dance! Please, before the night’s over? Can’t remmemmember it anyway!”

The way alcohol seemed to make Harley saner, if more chaotic, dancing seemed to drive her into a deeper madness, her pupils blown wide and eyes dark, and Ivy was mindless too for a moment as she looked at her, leaning in to the offer and maybe leaning in to Harley, because the club didn’t feel totally level anymore.

She never made it to the dance floor. She didn’t need to; Harley danced against her at the bar anyway, and Ivy felt so blisteringly, painfully exhilarated just from Harley’s proximity, and with every movement her fingers flexed as she longed to reach out and pull her closer to feel more of that rush of being alive after so long -

*

Red. _Red._ Everything glowed scarlet under neon lights, the color of fire, the color of the paint on her lips and the blood on her tongue and the pulsing storm in her veins. The color of red lights as the car roared through them, the color of fighting, violence, passion, everything she loved; the color of her, the color of the corona that formed when she stood in the darkness, a silhouette against the light, leading Harley out, and -

Green. Her world was green, because Harley was crashing into her again, nose to nose as she laughed and green eyes and green skin filled her vision and everything smelled like the scent of the earth after a storm. She tasted cherries on her tongue now, the metallic tang of blood long gone.

*

Ivy blinked. Several times. As if each heartbeat of blackness would provide a snapshot of the events that led her here. The music that had enveloped her what felt like a second ago now pounded somewhere else, faraway, muffled by brick walls. They stood face to face in some back alley, under a harsh yellow light, Harley leaning back against a brick wall and Ivy so close she could feel Harley’s breath on her lips. She looked down at them; they curled in a lazy smile. Her fingers rested on Harley’s cheek. Her other hand...held a tube of lipstick. Even with the cool night air soothing her blood and letting her breathe for the first time in what felt like hours, she couldn’t remember how she had gotten here or why or when - it took looking between Harley’s lips and the makeup in her hand to realize that the fight from earlier had smudged her perfect lips, smearing some of the red down from the corners and over her pale chin, and that Ivy was trying to clean her up.

And still, she hesitated, frozen to the spot despite the heat that rolled off of Harley’s body. Ivy’s body responded to heat, it always had, seeking it out the way trees stretch for sunlight, and she yearned for it now. Harley pressed her lips together and tilted her chin up, expectantly.

 _Focus._ She took a breath, and stared at Harley’s mouth instead of her eyes. 

She moved the lipstick slowly, determinedly. Harley went pliant under Ivy’s touch and did nothing to resist her bottom lip pulling slightly under the pressure, revealing slivers of bright white teeth. The plane of her full lips seemed endless; and when Ivy finally reached the end, she went back over the red trail she had left, filling the lines, smoothing the color, again and again, mesmerized and only vaguely aware of the irony of being so hypnotized by another woman’s lips. Harley opened her mouth by degrees to grant Ivy better access to the narrow strip of pink inner lip still untouched but at this distance, she still didn’t have the best angle to cover it correctly and smoothly -

Running on instinct, she pressed lightly on Harley’s cheek, and, submissive and pliant as Harley was, she angled her head down, opening her mouth wider, and looking up at Ivy through dark lashes with hazy, hooded eyes.

It took a blast of cold wind rushing through the alley to remind Ivy where she was and that she had not moved for several seconds.

She finished applying the lipstick with a deft stroke and pulled in a deep lungful of oxygen as her traitorously human heart hammered wildly. She felt each beat in every part of her and if Harley had chosen that moment to reach out and touch her, she would have felt it too and indeed, at the bottom of Ivy’s peripheral vision Harley’s hands moved up - Ivy stepped back reflexively, protectively, and Harley’s hands fell again.

“Thanks Red,” Harley mumbled, closing her eyes and leaning back against the brick as if she were about to fall into blissful sleep. “I owe ya one. Wanna go back in?”

There were many places she wanted to go - But only one she truly needed to. And luckily, Harley’s tone said that she’d go anywhere as long as it was with Ivy.

*

“Shh, shhhhhh,” Ivy whispered, unnecessarily given that they were the only two souls in this secluded corner of Robinson Park. It was a shortcut to get home, but also, she knew these winding trails better than anyone, knew their secrets, knew where to go to get away from humanity and recover under the shroud of greenery and fresh air, a rarity in this city and as vital to her existence as Harley was becoming. This was a pocket of sanity in an increasingly insane world.

“Why, are the trees lisssening?” Harley slurred, giggling.

Ivy shushed her again. There was something furtive in the way they held each other, both possessive and yearning, Ivy itching to pull her closer and Harley leaning into Ivy’s warmth; something they would never, ever do in public and something that felt risky even in the private silence of this stretch of the park. They had to be quiet, they had to be contained, they had to keep this secret from everyone, even themselves. 

If they were too loud about their closeness, made it too obvious, it would break through their pleasant, hazy veil of intoxication and they would no longer be able to deny it.

And so they stumbled home, leaning against each other, wrapped around each other, but no more than that; they saw themselves as onlookers would. A pair of best friends who had indulged just a little too much and relied on the other for support. That was what they were. That was what they would be.

*

The trip through the park restored some semblance of sanity to both of them. By the time they made it back to their apartment, Harley was half-asleep and Ivy had rediscovered her noble repose; she carefully lowered a whining Harley onto the couch, selected a handful of flowers and berries from her indoor garden, and glided into the kitchen to brew tea for the both of them. 

It only took ten minutes, but by the time she re-emerged with two steaming cups, Harley had passed out cold on the couch. Ivy set the cups on the table, next to the red and black flowers Harley had purchased that morning, and sat beside Harley. Ivy had steadied since her last drink, but she still had enough alcohol in her veins for plausible deniability - she reached out, running her fingers through Harley’s hair and smoothing it away from her face.

It woke her - Harley didn’t open her eyes, but she nuzzled into Ivy’s touch with a little sigh.

Then: “So good to me, Puddin’.”

_Oh._

Her chest collapsed in as if her ribs had snapped and she pulled her hand away as if Harley’s skin had burned her, instead of the word. A rush of shame washed over her when she realized the reflexive motion, mingling with everything else in her body and churning in her stomach, nauseating.

Harley rolled over, drifting back to sleep with the lack of contact. Ivy didn’t so much as breathe - she couldn’t take Harley waking up right now, because she didn’t know whether she would prefer knowing if Harley knew what she had mumbled, or if it had been entirely subconscious. They both hurt.

The minutes stretched out in a painful spiral down towards sobriety. Perfectly still on the couch, she wasn’t sure how much time passed, only that Harley sunk into a deeper sleep, deep enough to dream. Her breathing quickened into short bursts. She twitched. A leg jerked. It earned a half-smile from the midst of Ivy’s bitter, tumultuous reverie - but that smile vanished when the twitching became a wild jerk and the breathing a sobbing gasp.

Before Ivy could react, Harley jolted up with a shout. Her eyes were wide and wild, her hands flying to her hair.

_“I’m sorry!”_

Not to Ivy, but to someone who wasn’t there. She shook her head, looking for whoever it was as she babbled: “I didntmeanitpleasestopithurts-”

Everything before forgotten, Ivy was with her in an instant. She spread her hands over Harley’s back. “Hey, you’re okay, you’re okay,” Ivy murmured, leaning close. Harley looked at her with no hint of recognition for several seconds; Ivy continued to whisper to her, rubbing her back, until the familiarity returned to Harley’s eyes and her body began to relax. “I’m here, I’ve got you, you’re okay.”

“Ivy?” Harley asked.

“Yes. Just breathe. You had a nightmare.”

“It was about-”

“I know.” Ivy cut her off so they would not linger on him. “I’m here.”

“I thought...” she looked around. “I...you’ve been here all this time?”

“Mhmm.” Ivy pulled her hands back into her lap, looking down - Harley followed in search of their touch, but could only go so far. For lack of anything else to say, Ivy grabbed the two mugs. “Here. Drink this; you’ll sleep better and feel better in the morning,” she told her, though she fully believed Harley would have accepted just about anything for any reason, logical or not. When Harley had finished the cup, Ivy drank her own and moved to leave her on the couch, but Harley reached out and took a fistful of her shirt.

“Stay? Please?” She asked the question with her big blue eyes more than anything.

Ivy had tried to take the time while drinking the tea to decide, but still hadn’t been able to bring herself to consider the implications of staying, until the moment Harley pleaded. Even now, Ivy couldn’t deny her.

“Fine,” she muttered, lowering herself back onto the couch with uncertainty.

“Promise?”

Ivy hesitated. “Promise,” she said, haltingly. Then she softened. “In fact, an insurance policy...” She trailed off, reaching out to the two potted flowers on the table, the red canna lilies and black irises. She dragged her fingers along the leaves, down the stems, and dipped her fingertips beneath the soil. “There. I’m part of your flowers now, too; even when I’m not right next to you, I’ll always be with you in the flowers. Okay? Just remember the flowers.”

They were both fixated on the flowers, in fact, so much so that Ivy didn’t realize that Harley had leaned down onto her chest until she was laying them both down. In her surprise, Ivy resisted for the first few heartbeats - but she gave in, allowing Harley to layer herself along Ivy’s body and snuggle her head beneath Ivy’s chin. She threw an arm over her stomach and a leg over her thigh. 

Neither body fully relaxed, despite the hazy softness of the moment. Then Harley reached out and touched one of the black flower petals; Ivy shivered as the petal did. “See?” she asked.

She felt Harley’s muscles relax. “Thank you for everything,” she breathed.

“Always, sweetheart. Get some sleep.”

Harley’s breath took longer to steady this time, but even when it did, Ivy remained miles from sleep. Harley clung, as she always did, and the warm pressure of her body along Ivy’s melted through Ivy’s stiffness and reluctance by degrees, and thoughts of how nice this all felt punctured the armor she was desperately trying to cover herself with.

Some dark, secretive part of her wanted this, and she hated it. As soon as she gave that little flame a breath of oxygen, it superseded all other wants. Fire. All-consuming and completely destructive, and antithetical to everything she existed for. Her undoing. It was a terrifying flame licking along the edges of her thoughts and she scrabbled desperately for the cold logic to douse it before it caught.

 _We’re friends,_ she told herself. Just friends, and that’s what I want; she’s loyal and tough and she brings out a good side in me, and I don’t want to lose her friendship. She needs a friend. I need a friend. That’s all it is.

The lie burned like black smoke in her throat. Liar, liar, liar.

_“So good to me, Puddin’.”_

*

Which is why, when she awoke the next morning to find Harley gone, her first feeling was complete, numb relief.

Harley wasn’t just gone from the couch. Ivy sensed it as soon as she opened her eyes: the apartment was still and soulless and she let out a shaky rush of air, a breathless, humorless laugh. The car had been hurtling toward the cliff and Harley had bailed out and given Ivy just enough time to slam on the brakes before the car reached the edge with nothing but darkness below. A disaster had been averted.

Utter relief.

And as soon as she registered that, shame washed over her, erupting in her chest as she checked Harley’s room to find it emptied. She was truly gone, back to him.

It had to have been the nightmare - Harley had awoken from it and it had driven her right back into her waking nightmare and constant state of semi-sanity. Ivy could not believe she could feel relief at the thought of Harley sinking back into that, the selfishness required to be grateful Harley had returned to the darkness without her or any other guiding light.

But that was just it: Harley had given her a clean break, rather than an agonizing cycle of loss and hope until the inevitable hurt both of them.

And then, hours later, anger buried her relief and shame. Ivy spent the day seething. How disgustingly human - to want like that. To feel the pain of deprivation of something that she didn’t truly need. 

Briefly, she managed to direct this anger at Harley and her betrayal, but she couldn’t muster that energy for the poor girl; she felt more pity than anything. The girl was broken, and Ivy realized what a fool she had been for thinking she could put her back together. So she focused her anger on herself, relishing it for the protective shell it formed, allowing her to box up everything else. It allowed her to focus on everything she needed to do.

The only thing that could pierce that armor now, the one small arrow of hope and the one thing she tried not to think of over the next several weeks, was that Harley had taken her black and red flowers with her when she left.

She took the week to empty her apartment of every canna lily and iris she had, and then, for good measure, emptied it of everything black and red.

Clean breaks.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I swear plot happens from here on out. in my initial outline/freewrite of this chapter, I seriously wrote "I'll probably be able to carve about 2000 words out of them drinking together" and here we are, more than three times that. please continue to put up with me, there will be more forward progress eventually. thanks again for all the comments and support!


	8. Chapter 8

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> sorry for the delay! I like getting these out roughly every ten days, but I've had some minor personal stuff going on since Tuesday, so I haven't been able to log in and post even though the chapter has been finished.
> 
> also, I commissioned some Harley/Ivy fanart from an insanely talented friend of mine, and she said it should be done in the next few weeks, so I'll link that when she finishes! she's crazy good so I'm really excited.

Harley’s absence felt like the sun setting before the rise of a full moon - the sunlight was still there, just indirect. And it annoyed Ivy to no end.

The girl was impossible to escape.

Within thirty six hours of her departure, Harley and Joker decided to take their relationship to the next level with a high profile hostage situation at the downtown headquarters of one of the nation’s largest financial companies; they escaped after destroying eight floors of the building, and the ensuing city-wide manhunt made them top of the hour, top of the page, bold headline news for weeks. On some level she appreciated being able to unravel the Cinder conspiracy in anonymity, but eventually, Ivy couldn’t work without hearing the reports in the background, couldn’t go anywhere without passing her face on every newspaper stand. Harley was everywhere.

And Ivy couldn’t sleep without a dark, moonless night.

Of course, the sun also rises. And as sure as it does, Harley came back.

Ivy opened the door one morning and Harley Quinn slumped forward over the threshold, battered and broken. She had her potted plants tucked under one arm, and not much else.

“Hiya, Red. Didn’t...didn’t know where else to do.”

Everything that had hardened over the past weeks softened instantly. Ivy sighed. 

“Come here, love.”

She carried Harley across the threshold. It was the same as before. She even had the leftover wound salve on hand. She let her shower. Clean up. Got her a change of clothes; the jester suti was dirty and torn. They’d been living rough. She didn’t offer to help Harley apply the lotion, so that Harley could have another taste of independence and so that Ivy didn’t allow herself to be pulled off course again.

Harley left after two weeks. The separation was easier this time, prepared as Ivy was for it - it was the waiting that killed her now. The impending inevitability of it. As hard as it was to hear Harley’s name in the news each day, Ivy had much more fear of the day the reports stopped with the earth-shattering news that Harley Quinn’s body had been found.

Every night, before she went to sleep, she reached out through the Green, searching for Harley’s two flowers, making sure she was still alive. Every morning, she held her breath as she turned on the news. Two painful bookends to her days.

The next time Harley turned up at her door, ten days later, Ivy felt nothing but that same old rush of relief and shame.

Harley was chipper this time, alarmingly so, grinning wide and tight and dead-eyed. Ivy stood aside without a word and she skipped into the apartment. It should have felt familiar, having her back, and when Ivy could see Harley out of the corner of her eye, it almost did. But this was wrong. Empty. Flat. Just like her eyes.

That night, Ivy stayed awake after Harley fell asleep and when she started screaming sometime past three AM, Ivy was on hand with a fresh-brewed sedating tea.

“Are you going to be okay?” she asked, standing at a safe distance as Harley finished the tea.

“Mhmm. Just needed a little break, no big deal.”

“You needing a break without him breaking some part of you, that’s new.”

She heard the roughness in her tone as soon as the words came out of her mouth. Harley grimaced as she looked away, hiding from Ivy as she rearranged her face into the normal zany grin.

“This time he just threw me out before it got bad,” she mused, “He’s been a bit off his game.”

Ivy didn’t laugh. “He’s never been on it. You really think this is ever going to get better?”

“’Course it is. We kill the Bat and live happily ever after. Easy.”

“Harley...do you honestly believe that?”

She changed the subject with a wave of her hand. “So how you been? Any news on that Tinder thing?”

“Cinder. And I’m fine,” she lied. Harley smiled and nodded, face blank, and Ivy had the feeling she could have told Harley she had gotten married and had three kids and Harley would have gone along with it, gone along with anything to avoid talking about Joker.

“Good to hear, Pam. What about Cinder?”

“It’s not important right now.”

“It’s very important. Nothin’ more important than plants. And death.”

“It’s...” she sighed. “All I know is that it has something to do with medicinal plants, and that money is being moved between shell corporations in a few different countries to cover the trail. I haven’t found the end yet, but I’m hunting down a pharmaceutical executive next week. Are you in?”

Harley smirked. “I love it when you talk murdery to me, Dandilioness. I’m in.”

Ivy didn’t count on it, and she was right not to. She kept up the facade, trying to keep Harley distracted with movies and shopping and healthy vegan meals, but it made no difference. Harley lasted three days after that conversation. One night, Ivy went out to rob a jewelry store for next month’s rent and a bribe she needed for info on the pharma executive. When she came back, Harley was gone again. Back to him, and back to worrying for Ivy.

She sighed, shrugged, and went to make dinner. She wouldn’t bother changing the sheets on Harley’s bed; she’d be back eventually. And this was getting easier every time.

Sun up, sun down.

*

The cold wind whipped through her hair as the convertible roared through the streets of Gotham, down the wrong side of the road and whistling past oncoming cars with inches to spare. Her giddy laugh was snatched away in the rush of night air - as they drifted around a corner, she put her hands up above the windshield and screamed as if she were riding a roller coaster. She loved roller coasters. Maybe Puddin’ could take her to -

_ “You crazy broad, you’re driving the car!”  _

Harley jumped and grabbed the wheel just in time to wrench the convertible out of the path of an oncoming truck.

Puddin’, fiddling with his gun in the passenger seat, turned around slowly to the goon in the backseat who had screamed at her.

“What did you just say to her?”

Harley watched the man squirm in her rear view mirror and a smile crept over her face. 

“Boss,” he tried, “c’mon, she almost got us all killed!”

Mr. J stared. “Are you saying you’re not prepared to die for the light of my life?” The man tried to protest, but Mr. J’s voice cut him off. “I’m sorry, Chuckles, I forgot you’re just here for comic relief! I’ve been a terrible little band leader, bringing the wrong henchmen on tonight’s murder spree - I brought the comedians, not the killers!”

The man held his breath, too stupid to think of something clever to say. Something that would save his life. Harley had half a dozen quips on her tongue and she savored the taste of them as she watched him struggle.

“Oh well, at least you can be useful and make me laugh,” Puddin’ said. 

Then he shot the man in the head and they howled with laughter at the dumbstruck look in his lifeless eyes.

The convertible skidded to a perfect stop, cushioned a bit by the hedges that Harley plowed through. Sure, she could have stopped sooner before jumping the curb, but she was hoping to concuss or otherwise incapacitate the other henchmen in the backseat, so that she and Puddin’ could be alone.

Inconveniently, he had managed to keep his mouth shut and his seatbelt on, so he was healthy enough to go along on this job. The three of them climbed out of the convertible over the doors, which were pinned in by the hedges. Harley looked up at the mansion on the hill above them.

“Women drivers, right?” Mr. J muttered to his henchman, looking at the car. The man guffawed obediently.

The three made their way up the hill to the mansion, Harley with her bat slung over her shoulders and a loose bandolier of C-4, the henchman with a few machine guns, and Mr. J with his wits and charm. And one pretty little chrome revolver Harley had gotten him for a Wednesday. A formidable team - the capo who owned this place didn’t stand a chance.

Or, he wouldn’t have, if he had even been there. Harley busted open a window and the dark and silent house stayed dark and silent.

“Not even guarded!” Harley exclaimed brightly.

“Harley!” Mr. J shouted. “Silence is the name of the game, my sweet. The Signore of this particular abode has failed to pay his protection money, so we’re going to acquire it before burning down his now unprotected estate here. I don’t really feel like making spaghetti of his minions tonight, so let’s keep it quiet, my dear.”

They stormed through the dark manor, stuffing their pockets and comically oversized money bags with anything that looked remotely valuable, interesting, or, in Harley’s case, likely to make Puddin’ smile. Her bag jingled merrily with gaudy jewelry from Mrs. Signore Whathisname’s dresser and a baker’s dozen of small glass circus animals that would make awesome projectiles if thrown accurately.

She was dancing the little giraffe across a large oak desk in the study as Mr. J played with the books when something clicked - she looked up as a bookshelf swung open, revealing a black steel wall safe.

“Oh, we have a real Hardy Boy on our hands here,” he giggled. “Harley, the explosives.”

The henchman stood guard at the door to the study while Harley quickly applied the C-4 to the safe and stood back, her fingers in her ears. Puddin’ ducked behind the desk. The explosion was so loud it rattled her brain around in her skull pleasantly’ she giggled until she coughed on the smoke.

“Harley, remember, you can’t talk and breathe at the same time,” Joker said, kicking aside the bookshelf debris after the smoke cleared. “Now, stand watch with Slinky.”

He didn’t say what she was supposed to watch, so she watched him, watched his long, spidery fingers dig through the papers in the safe. He grumbled and muttered to himself, throwing them over his shoulder in frustration as he dug for the valuables. 

One fluttered close to Harley. She bent down to pick it up - a handwritten note.

_ C, I need double. East Roosevelt. _

A whole bunch of numbers followed and it was signed with a little picture of a birdie, which made her smile, but as she re-read the note, she cocked her head,. It was strange. The wording...she couldn’t put her finger on it, but she thought of Ivy for the first time since she left her apartment the week before.

A soft rush of air blew over her cheek from behind. She smiled at the indoor wind.

It wasn’t until she heard the thunk of a dropping body that she remembered wind was only outside.

“You have no way out, Joker,” came the rough growl.

Okay, so that’s when she remembered wind is outdoors.

_ Batsy. _

Harley grinned at the way Puddin’ lit up with joy at the sound of his voice.  _ Time to kill him! Time to kill! Get him, Harley!  _

She spun around - the Dark Knight filled the entirety of the doorway of the study, standing over Slinky’s unconscious body. Harley’s grin widened and she hefted her bat, coming in hard so that Puddin’ could take aim from afar. To the soundtrack of his laughter, she battled bat vs Bat, swinging for all the essential joints and being stopped at every attempt - she tried to position him so that Puddin’ would have a clear shot, but no gunfire ever came.

Instead, one of the Wonderboys - or whatever they called themselves nowadays, maybe the other way around - crashed through the window, dive-bombing Harley and smashing her into the ground. Another one, a redhead, flew in after him. A smoke grenade went off and cords wrapped around her wrists and ankles. Her bat clattered to the ground and someone hefted her to her feet.

All while Puddin’ laughed.

When the smoke cleared, Batman had Puddin’ bound up like a prized hog too - Harley saw that Batwoman, of all people, had her tied up, while that hunk Nightwing had stun guns trained on both her and Mr. J. She fake dry-heaved and stomped her foot.

“Come on, no fair! That’s two versus three!”

“What about him?” the soulless ginger who held Harley said, nodding to Slinky’s body.

“Him? He doesn’t count,” Harley scoffed. “Slinky’s never filled out a census form. If the government ain’t gonna count him as a person, what makes you think we will?”

She laughed all the way to Arkham.

*

Ivy had to read the headline three times before she could comprehend it, so blissfully mind-numbing was her relief. Opium had nothing on finding out that Harley Quinn had been captured and sent to Arkham.

Her full cup of tea grew cold as she read and re-read the article. She chuckled to herself in her empty apartment, a little breathless. Arkham held prisoners about as well as a colander holds water, but the doctors at least had the sense to keep Harley and Joker separated. For the time being, until the inevitable breakout, Arkham was safe. Harley was safe.

She had, roughly, five to seven days before Harley and Joker broke out and the cycle began anew - if she was going to get anything done, it had to be now. Total calm and focus overtook her. Ivy left the newspaper and her cup of tea on the table and went to work.

As much as her body craved sunlight, the cool, moonless night invigorated her. Instilled with such newfound purpose, Ivy’s legs carried her with quick, powerful strides across the street and into the parking garage. She knew the layout of the cameras, she knew the mazy path she needed to take to stay in the blindspots. She was focused, murderous, and so ice cold that the vial of airborne toxins felt warm as she twirled it in her fingers.

One of Medivent Pharmaceutical’s board members, a conniving little billionaire globetrotter named Bennett, had dinner at the same five star restaurant every Friday night; his driver waited in this parking garage, directly below the restaurant. Routines are dangerous, but arrogance is even worse.

She found Bennett’s Aston Martin in its usual spot, as her source had told her it would be. The driver leaned against the wall nearby, smoking. She felt his eyes on her as she approached, studying the car with the feigned interest of a connoisseur and the loose hip swing of some lost, helpless siren whom perhaps his boss would favor.

“Lovely car,” she said, and she meant it. Jet black, easily worth a few million. It would be a shame to see it smashed. Maybe she’d just murder both men right here and take it for herself.

She smiled despite herself. Harley was such a wonderfully terrible influence.

The driver, one of those men unable to imagine women having any sort of inner monologue that didn’t concern him, flicked his cigarette and strode towards her with dark eyes. “I’ve got ten minutes. Want a ride?”

_ God, men were so predictable. _

As soon as he got close, she pulled him in for a kiss. That small moment of vulnerability was all she needed to poison him with a slow-acting hallucinogenic. In half an hour, while driving Bennett home, the delusions would take hold, and the driver would believe both Bennett and himself a threat and smash the car into the nearest brick wall. Murder suicide, poison would never even be looked at.

When she pulled away, she left the man swaying on the spot in a haze and traipsed around to the hood of the car. She popped it open and sprinkled the toxins from her vial over the engine, to be sucked into the ventilation system, just in case Bennett survived the inevitable car accident.

She had forgotten how impressive she no longer spent half of her waking hours and all of her sleeping hours worrying about some fucking clown who could give a damn about her.

Job done, Ivy selected an appropriate sports car for herself and waited in the driver’s seat with an eye on Bennett’s car. The minutes ticked by as her anticipation built. At last, the door to the garage swung open and Bennett sauntered out, towards his car - with a cadre of six burly bodyguards around him.

Ivy’s eyebrows went up. Her source had neglected to mention this.

Her surprise deepened to concern when the men approached the car cautiously, two speaking with the driver, two staying vigilant with Bennett, and the last two examining the car with practiced attention. This was cutting it close; Bennett had already taken longer at dinner than expected, and the poison would take effect in a matter of minutes. If this search went any longer...

One of the guards talking to the driver frowned and beckoned over one of his comrades with Bennett. Ivy swore under her breath and checked her watch. The men searching the car popped the hood. The toxin wasn’t concentrated enough to affect them immediately, but if they bent over and breathed too deep...

_ Fine. Harley’s way it is. _

The driver gave her a dazed smile at her approach, which lulled the guards into the half-second of complacency she needed to slam the edge of her hand into the windpipe of the closest and flip the next headfirst into the concrete; she ducked a punch from another man and wrapped a live vine around his throat, let him struggle with that; by the time she had taken out the three of them, Bennett had bolted and the guns had come out. She moved faster but still didn’t break a sweat as she threw herself into the last three men, drawing them into each other’s crossfire to prevent the triggers being pulled as she systematically and effortlessly broke bones and ruptured internal organs. 

The last man alive was writhing on the floor, gasping for breath when Ivy knelt down to eye level. She still had time to catch Bennett and ask this guy one very important question:

“Who’re you working for?”

“Bennett,” he spat, eyes wild with fear.

“Obviously. Who’d Bennett pay for your services? Who do you answer to?”

“Please...” She arched an eyebrow and he broke: “Cassano.”

Satisfied, she ended his misery and appropriated the car keys from the driver.

The Aston Martin did drive well - it made for a nice prize, purring beneath her touch as it careened around the corners of the parking garage after Bennett, deep in thought. Massimo Cassano was an ambitious local boss, head of the Cassano family, a cadet branch of the Falcone empire. She’d have to pay Massimo Cassano a visit, explore his connections. As the criminal element to all of this, he’d have handshake deals with several yet-unknown members of the plot, which would make her job considerably easier.

Her musings were only interrupted by the brief jolt of the car as she ran down Bennett. Thankfully, he disappeared beneath the wheels instead of flying up and smashing the pristine windshield. Ivy made sure to back up over his body a few times to be completely sure.

As she glided out of the parking garage, she stopped by the security booth and looked into the eyes of the terrified teenage security guard. She lowered the tinted window just far enough for him to see her eyes.

“Excuse me, handsome. I’m going to need the security tapes from tonight.”

*

She once read somewhere that a bunch of monkeys with a bunch of typewriters ended up writing some pretty good stuff, and some other guy took all the credit, so Harley had spent the last three days drumming all sorts of beats on the walls of her cell, figuring that her musical genius will be recognized at some point. They’d have to let her out of here if she wrote the next Beethoven, right?

So far, all she’d succeeded in doing was annoying the ever living hell out of dear ol’ Nygma in the next cell over, and honestly that was just as good.

“Miss Quinn,” he groaned against his door. “What do you get when you combine the start of a drum solo and those three notes in the back of your head?”

Harley stopped. “I don’t know, what?”

“Dead!” called Mr. J from across the cell block, flat and bored. “Oh, you’re getting dull, Eddie, almost as dull as Harley here. Harley, the start of a drum solo is D - the last three notes in the back of your head is  _ EAD. _ At least Harley is entertaining us! If you threaten my entertainment again, you’ll end up with something else in the back of your head.”

Pride surged through her at being under his protection, and it was enough to drag her away from playing the grand waltz she had been writing in her head. She leaned against the door and looked through the narrow slat to Puddin’s cell across the block, hoping for a glimpse of him, a flash of his wild eyes.

She pushed the envelope a little. “C’mon, Puddin’, I’m all rested up and ready to go again. When are we getting out of here?”

She’d been asking the same question since the two hour mark of their temporary incarceration, every time the guard shift changed. He’d been noncommittal - and she understood, Puddin’ being on his best behavior meant that he got a normal cell near her instead of the extra high security holes he usually got shoved into - but she was capital B bored.

“Harley, I’m trying to relax,” he shouted, and she heard a thump as he hit his fist on the door. “We move when I say we move.”

“But Mistah J....”

“Silence, Harley!”

“Do you two ever shut up? Some of us are trying to sleep!” someone shouted from three doors down. She didn’t know who, just that she’d kill them whenever she eventually broke out of here.

She resumed her drum solo with new vigor.

*

“Dr. Quinzel.”

Harley stared at the new guy. He stared back. She furrowed her brow; he raised his, expectantly.

She looked over her shoulder, confused. “Are you talkin’ to me?”

The psychiatrist smiled softly and slightly adjusted the video camera beside him, aimed at her. “My apologies. Just stating your name for proper record-keeping. I record all of my sessions so that I can study them later. You prefer...Harleen? Harley?”

“I prefer to be called by my name, yah,” she said, raising her chin. “You’re not cute enough ta get away with callin’ me anything else, Scorsese.”

The doctor across the desk examined Harley’s face, looking for any sign of weakness, any small light in the darkness of her psychopathy. That’s how she knew he was new: they all came in with such hope, herself included. He was sizing her up, planning his attack to bring her back to the side of the good. Right now, he was easing her into it, trying to lure her into a false sense of security with smiles and concessions and kindness. So predictable.

“So I have heard,” he said. “Allow me to introduce myself: I am Doctor Norbert Norton.” And of course he fuckin’ was, a nerdy name like that. Because the same way he was sizing her up, she was sizing him up. 

Doctor Norbert Norton was scrawny, brainy, balding in his middle age, but with the kind of set jaw and intelligent eyes of someone who had shouldered a lot of responsibility in his life, and was attacking this new goal of rehabilitating Arkham crazies with the same optimistic determination. He was a family man, because even though he’d taken his ring off, his left ring finger moved a little more than the rest of them, used to a heavier weight around the middle, and used to being fiddled with when he was deep in thought. He’d never been in a fight in his whole goddamn life, that was apparent. If she could wriggle out of these bindings on the chair, she could pop out a shoulder and flip out of this straight jacket in half a second and attack from his right side - his weak side - before he knew what hit him.

So she worked at the bindings slowly, playing with him.

“Norbert Norton,” she repeated slowly. “Wow, your parents really hated you, huh?

His lip curled and he started to speak, but she cut him off. "That's a bad guy name if I ever heard one. Alliterative an' everything. Backstory writes itself, your parents hated you, so you got that deep trauma, and I'm sure plenty of schoolyard teasing that changing it to "Bert" didn't alleviate. When you lose it, and start a new life with all us elevated crazy folks, you're gonna want to leave that trauma behind, so you'll come up with some sciencey brainy alter-ego to take revenge on all those mean kids, or stroke your own ego, or whatever. Basically I give give you six months before you’re in here with me, crazier'n a hubcap in a dog factory.”

He didn’t blink. “Yes, I have read you enjoy trying to get under the skin of others.”

_"That_ got under your skin?” She snorted. “Okay, three months.”

“Miss Quinzel,” he pressed firmly, “I’d like us to be friends. Do you have any friends? Do they appreciate your antagonism?”

“I got one!” She brightened despite herself. “She puts up with everything I do. She’s a good friend. A better friend than you, Bert.”

“What’s her name?”

Harley chewed her tongue, sullen. Ivy was  _ hers. _ She wouldn’t share her, even here. It felt like a betrayal.

He switched tactics. “Harley, I believe you can be helped. This is merely and introductory session designed to-”

“-to foster a rapport between the two of us, not as patient and doctor, but two adults with complex inner machinations and dreams and desires, so that we can be open about the complex and sort through it until we can cut a straight path through towards mental and physical health,” she finished for him. Even if it’s not exactly where he had been going, it was the general thrust, judging by the jump of his bushy eyebrows. “I know, Doc, I’ve been in this chair more times than you’ve been in yours. Been in yours more times than you’ve been in it too, come to think of it.”

Harley sat forward. “Truth is, I don’t need to be healed. I’m free of every chain and weight and shackle that society put on me. I’m free. I can breathe. And you, you’re gonna go choke on your average fuckin’ mediocre life.”

His eyes widened slightly and he checked to see that the camera was recording before scribbling something down.

A wicked grin spread across her face. Hook, line, and sinker. “Angelina Jolie,  _ Girl, Interrupted. _ Won an Oscar for that role an’ everything.” She winked at the camera and he threw his pen down on his desk and sat back in frustration and she laughed uproariously. “C’mon, Doc, I’m just playin’. I don’t need to be here. I could have put up a fight and stayed in my cell, but I wanted to meetcha, see if you and your little camera might be fun to play with.”

Norton glared at her. “And?”

She shrugged. “Dunno. Mostly I’m just taking my time feeding you all this junk to distract you so that Puddin’ can put the finishin’ touches on the escape plan we’ve been workin’ on together.”

Four guards threw her back into her cell with force that Norbert Norton had authorized them in his rage. Less than ten minutes later, they were hauling Puddin’ out of his cell, dragging him down the hall to the solitary confinement cell block, to the cell they kept open special for him.

Harley sat back on her bed with smug satisfaction. Puddin’ hated solitary confinement. He said he couldn’t sleep in the darkness. He’d break them out of here by tomorrow morning.

*

Exactly twelve hours later, sometime before dawn, the latch on her door clicked and the door swung open. She hesitated, and when no guards piled in, she let out a quiet squeal of excitement.

But Puddin’, god, he was irate. Scary mad. He awaited her at the end of the cell-block, half in shadow, and even from the outline of his form she could see the tension in his shoulders and all of her satisfaction bled out of her, replaced by a focus honed by fear. She had to act fast - she had to redirect his fury, like a judo champ, duck his swings and channel them elsewhere.

“Harley...” he growled, not moving but beckoning her closer.

She adopted a cartoonish drawl. “Hol’ on, Puddin’! Got somethin’ to do first.” She pointed at the dark cell three doors down from hers, the one who had shouted at them. “Remember this guy? How sleepy he was? Why don’t we help him?”

When she saw the white gleam of his teeth in the darkness, she relaxed. “You’re right, my dear. And I believe you’ve just inspired our next celebration of freedom.”

*

This time, the mansion up on the hill was all lit up and pretty, even at this late hour, but there were only a few cars in the driveway. She and Mr. J could take the place alone, tear the mob boss apart for luring them into a trap and then calling the Bat down on them and getting them sent to Arkham. Mr. J’s pride had been injured, and he wanted his satisfaction.

They got it, in bloody spades. The gang enforcers guarding the perimeter of the estate were sleepy after their all-night watch, and Mr. and Mrs. Signore Cassano were fast asleep, thinking themselves safe so close to dawn. Harley delighted herself with all the real jewelry on display now, way better than the fake stuff that had been part of the trap, while Joker absolutely reveled in the bloodshed.

They made their way down to the safe again. The wall was still wrecked, so Harley split apart the desk in her search while Joker grumbled something about finding some gasoline. 

She found the papers from before, more strange little notes. _ “C, I need double. East Roosevelt”  _ and _ “C, in nature, destination essentially reached”  _ and _ “C, in nocte, deliver everything ready.”  _ All with different strings of numbers.

The notes were to Cassano, the now-dead owner of the house. Even she could tell that. But the words...

She frowned.

C-I-N-D-E-R.

Cinder. And numbers. Bank accounts and dates and coordinates, depending on the message.

Ivy.

It clicked. And at the same time she realized it, she looked up and recognized that the office was lined with plants, plants that hadn’t been there when she and Mr. J blew it up before.. Flowers, potted, recently delivered based on the fact that the shelves had been dusted.

Cassano was part of the plot Ivy was working to bring down, and Ivy was planning to attack him. She was watching him with her fancy plant magic.

A wild thrill shot through her and she cackled.  _ Ivy, Ivy, Ivy _ \- Harley even turned toward the doorway, as if the beautiful Pamela Isely was about to stride in through the door and whisk her away with a smirk.

So real was this delusion and soaring hope that when Joker walked in, carrying a canister of gasoline and emptying the last of it onto the floor, the wind rushed out of her as if she’d been hit in the stomach.

“What are you doing?” she managed to ask, with whatever breath was left.

“Burning this fancy shed to the ground,” he laughed.

_ No! _ Ivy wanted to -  _ the papers - Cassano - Cinder - _

She giggled. It would all be cinders.

Focus, Harley. “But then no one will know you did it!” she protested. “Let’s at least take the bodies out, put ‘em on display.”

He appraised her for a moment. “Fine. But you’re carrying him - Signore Cassano has had a few too many meatballs lately and it’s been a long night.”

Giddy, Harley shoved the papers from the desk into her shirt when he wasn’t looking, along with a pen, and zipped up the stairs to where they had left the bodies in the master bedroom. 

“Better hurry!” he shouted after her. “I’m lighting this match with or without you!”

Massimo Cassano wasn’t as heavy as Joker pretended and she was able to push him out the window with ease, then clamber down the trellis after him. She dragged his body towards a nearby tree, working quickly before Joker came out to survey her work, dreading him catching her in the act.

She arranged Cassano in a sleeping position, something funny to make Joker laugh and not look too closely. She scribbled her note on the back of one of the letters, then she shoved the lot of them in Cassano’s sleep shirt, grabbed a few flowers that she knew would get the proper attention, and threw them on the body.

The house went up in flames behind her and she heard Joker calling just as she finished. She rejoined him, and they ran, laughing, into the night.

*

Ivy jolted awake, phantom flames dancing over her skin.

_ Fire. _

She was finely attuned to the plants she’d smuggled into the Cassano manor, almost as finely tuned as she was to Harley’s flowers, and she felt the flames licking over her skin as they rose over the plants in the study. She severed the connection - she knew more than enough - and dressed quickly before rushing from her apartment. No point in subtle or intricate planning now. The place was going up in flames and she needed to take whatever she could get.

But by the time the mansion came into sight, it was too late; the dark blue skyline was lit up with the red-orange inferno, the mansion entirely consumed. As she watched fire crews deal with the blaze, Ivy kept to the shadows in a park across the street, fighting the urge to uproot all of these trees and smash their trucks for her own satisfaction.

If she were human, she never would have heard the footsteps, light as they were. It was the feeling of twigs bending in the foliage behind her that alerted her to another presence. Ivy tensed, focusing on a series branches that could impale the intruder if they proved a threat, and then -

“Isley.”

She’d recognize that purr anywhere; she released her held breath and the branches above her relaxed.

“Selina.”

“Fire’s a little grandiose for you, isn’t it?” Selina Kyle asked, taking form out of the shadows and stepping to Ivy’s side to watch the blaze. “Thought you liked it more personal.”

“I do. This wasn’t me.”

“Then why are you here?”

“Skulking in the bushes with you? You first.”

Selina has never quite cleared the threshold of friend, though in her defense, it was quite a high bar. But Ivy recognized in her the same thing Selina recognized in Ivy: cool competence, a potential ally that you never allow to see your weak side, unless you want a knife hanging out of it. So they had skirted friendship for years, always a little cagey, but trusting enough.

“Why else?” Selina answered with a low laugh. “I was planning to relieve Mrs. Cassano of a particularly heavy diamond necklace. Been casing the place for a few nights. When I heard the police scanners, well...what’s your excuse?”

“Cassano’s lending his men to a series of executives I don’t quite get along with; they’re taking out forests and water supplies and I’m trying to get to the bottom of it.”

“Hmm. Too bad Joker and Harley beat you to him.”

Ivy rounded on her. “What?”

Selina raised a cool eyebrow at the ferocity of the question. “He’s dead.”

“How do you know Harley -“

“That’s a ten million dollar mansion up in flames. Doesn’t it scream Harley Quinn’s favored brand of chaos?” She smirked. “Besides, its simple deduction anyway. Batman picked the two of them up here a week ago, after Cassano laid a trap and called up GPD to get Batman to take Joker off his trail. They broke out tonight, so...over the top revenge is their basic motivator, isn’t it?”

Ivy was hardly paying attention. If Harley were here, if she were still here...she reached out through the grass, the shrubbery, the pristine flower beds, searching the grounds, avoiding the fire...

“There’s a body,” Ivy said, and added with some relief, “Male, north side of the house.”

“That’s freaky.”

“Says the Catwoman,” Ivy shot back airily, already striding away. Nonetheless, Selina followed her, ignoring that age old advice about feline curiosity. With all the focus on the house, it was easy for the two women to skirt the grounds and locate Massimo Cassano’s body, covered in red and black flowers.

“Definitely Harley,” Ivy muttered. She knelt down to pull a stack of papers from the collar of Cassano’s sleep shirt, and flicked through them.

Selina read over her shoulder. “Well, they’re barely literate, but I recognize bank accounts when I see them. This is a delightfully tangled web you’ve wrapped yourself in, Ivy.”

“Does your close friend know anything about it?” Ivy asked, voice icy. Batman was a major reason Ivy tended to keep Selina at arm’s length. Were it not for Selina’s attraction and ongoing enmity-turned-flirtation with him, the two women could probably be close friends; she just didn’t trust Selina to choose her friends over her lover when the chips were down, and that wasn’t a risk she was willing to take.

“I can ask,” Selina offered coolly.

“No, thank you. The less he’s involved in this, the better.” She paused, and with her annoyance overflowing into acidity, added, “I’ve never understood why powerful women are so weak for lesser men.”

Selina didn’t really deserve that; it was frustration directed at someone else.

Thankfully, Selina didn’t even blink, nor did her smirk falter. Ever cool, that one. “He has his merits. And from what I’ve heard of your early days in Gotham, you had an appreciation for those merits as well.”

“Follies of youth. You’ll understand one day.” The twinkle in her eye was a ceasefire, which Selina accepted. She handed her a few of the letters to examine herself. “Heard anything about power shifts?” she asked, more serious now. She had picked up the capitalization pattern immediately; even though Cassano was dead, the numbers would provide a wealth of leads to follow.

Selina held up one of the letters with a bank account number. “Information has a cost.”

Ivy scowled and nodded. “Fine.”

“I haven’t heard much,” Selina said, tucking it away. “But Cassano is a...reluctant cadet branch of the Falcone family, whose grip on Gotham has been waning the more Gordon cleans up GCPD. If anyone were trying to make a play on Falcone’s control, they’d need serious financial backing, and they’d need high-placed connections to protect them and work with them once they replaced Falcone. Sound like your little mission?”

Ivy nodded. “And they’d take control how, in your opinion?”

“Same way they all do,” Selina said with a shrug. “Chaos. Gang wars, drugs, employing some of Arkham’s finest, you name it. Weaken the system, take over. There’s a reason Joker’s usually on top around here. Thing is...”

She weighed her next words. Ivy darkened. “Tell me.”

“Guys like Cassano don’t act out without stronger backing than they could get from Falcone. Whoever the figurehead is here, they’re big time. Know anything about what they’re interested in?”

“Pharmaceuticals. Some sort of drug,” Ivy muttered, with a tone that dissuaded further questioning.

“That narrows the field,” Selina said with a short laugh. “I don’t know what you’re wrapped up in, but if Cassano is...or was, part of it, his whole family will be involved too, everything from personal protection to bribing and blackmailing politicians to...revenge and enforcement. On top of that, you’re up against whoever he answers to. So watch yourself, Ivy.”

A gangster intent on making a power play in Gotham, with an even stronger enemy keeping him on a leash, and Harley just killed him. She didn’t know whether to be proud or worried - but she was at least comfortable in her annoyance that Harley seemed determined to enmire herself in the Cinder mess.

Pulling her from her thoughts, Selina pointed at the stack in Ivy’s hand. “You know, there’s a note on the back of that one.”

She flipped it over in surprise. In a messy scrawl, with hearts dotting the I’s, was:

_ “Looks like you owe me one now, Miss Petunia. Heard you were taking your sweet time killing this guy so I decided to hurry it up for ya. Maybe be faster next time? If you can, I mean. I know I’m too quick for ya. _

_ Miss ya, Red _

_ Xx, Harley” _

On any other night, Ivy would have blistered with annoyance that Harley had killed Cassano and sniffed out her most direct line of information, but that thought was entirely eclipsed by the sheer audacity in Harley’s tone in her letter. The challenge. The  _ smugness. _ Harley really thought she had beaten her.

Ivy licked her lips as they parted in a smile. This would be fun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hopefully that little cameo made up for the lack of Harley/Ivy interaction in this chapter. Selina will feature more later, because there's no way we can't have a little Siren action in here. but we'll return to our regularly scheduled programming next chapter, with more angst and more fun and that constant build!


	9. Chapter 9

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yikes. sorry for this egregious delay! the slow burn is still burning, but I've discovered that I write faster when it's burning faster, so...make of that what you will.

It started in a lab. Get in, smash some stuff up, grab the toxic gas, get out. Mr. J had trusted her with this, her and a retinue of intellectuals. Luckily, they stayed far away from her cyclone of chaos, and that suited her fine, since Gonzo was a liability and Doodles had been drooling a little bit too much lately anyway, it grossed her out. After smashing in the control panel, Harley was the first through the heavy secure doors into the storage room, with the rest of the team hanging back.

And thankfully so, because the room was totally empty.

Harley stopped dead in her tracks, dropping her bat with a clang to the floor. There was no way she had gotten the room wrong - why else would they have big blast proof metal doors?

And then she saw it: on a big shelf in the back of the room, where the nastiest chemicals should have been...a bouquet of roses. Black and red.

_Ivy._

When the rest of the gang found her, Harley was rolling on the floor laughing.

They didn’t get the joke, obviously, they never did, but they laughed like the trained monkeys that they were. In their uncomfortable guffaws as they peered around the room, looking for the explosives they were supposed to be stealing, they didn’t notice that Harley had a cell phone and a note clutched tight to her chest. It was one of a few cards she kept close over the next few weeks, stealing away to look at it whenever she needed a genuine smile:

_Dear Harley,_

_I waited around for a while - guess I didn’t expect you to be so slow after all of your big talk with Cassano. The phone has my number, so give me a call if you want some lessons. I know you’re pretty new to all of this but I think with some practice you could keep up with me._

_See you soon, Harls._

_xoxo_

_Ivy_

Harley had no idea how Ivy could have known, but the con was so delightful that she truly didn’t care. Harley stole away with a single flower slipped inside her jacket, which she’s pretty sure gave her good look as they escaped the facility. They had to make up for the setback by winging an attack on another chemical company, making them a few hours late for their delivery to Joker, but it didn’t matter. That little rose, the note, and the cell phone were fireworks in a dark sky.

She wouldn’t call Ivy just yet, of course. She had other plans.

*

Ivy tapped the phone against her palm, impatient and trying to distract herself from the distaste of the feeling. She tilted her head back at the moon and took a few deep breaths. Unfortunately, they were deep inhales of back alley trash and puddles of questionable liquids, but it was a necessary evil right now. She needed information.

It hadn’t been hard to track down one of Joker’s mooks. She had ensnared one outside of a nightclub and had him under her spell in thirty seconds: within a minute, he was spilling his guts about some plan to steal a neurotoxin in development from a weapons lab.

Why they still had weapons labs in Gotham, she didn’t know, but the important thing was what he said next: that Harley would be leading the charge.

With that plan set, he promptly forgot the meeting at Ivy’s suggestion and gave a glassy-eyed nod when she directed him to meet at this spot again next week. He only looked slightly dumber than usual; no one would notice a little drool.

After planting the phone and responsibly disposing of the chemicals, Ivy had spent the week waiting for Harley’s message, painfully aware of how juvenile it was and yet unable to stop herself from checking the screen every few minutes. By the time her next meeting with Joker’s clown rolled around, she was ready to snap; she’d gone back to checking the paper for the news she was dreading.

Eventually, he ambled up, ten minutes late. The moment she heard his footsteps on the wet pavement of the alley, she whipped around.

“Is she okay?”

“Who?”

She briefly weighed the value of her inside man against the satisfaction she’d gain by hanging him somewhere high for Batman to find.

“Harley,” she breathed, with more control. “Is she okay? Did Joker... he didn’t find anything on her, did he?”

Because it had been a risk, giving her the phone. If he found it...but Ivy had wanted her to have some sort of lifeline, pressed against her palm under the guise of friendly banter. And Harley could handle herself...mostly. But logic overruled emotion here, and she worried still.

“I think she’s fine,” he said with a shrug. “Boss has been right pissed all week but she’s mostly been shopping, he takes it out on the guys. We’re a bit...slow...”

Ivy rolled her eyes. “So what do you have for me?”

“Uhhhh.” He didn’t realize that she was tipping towards valuing her own satisfaction over his life. “I guess we’re robbin’ a bank soonish? I don’t know, I just go where they tell me. And I think boss has some beef with some rich guy who didn’t laugh at one of his jokes the other week, so we’re probably gonna bust some legs or something...”

But Ivy had stopped listening. She was starting at her phone, struck dumb, lips slightly parted.

A message notification. Her first.

She swiped to open it.

_H: Heyyyy Red. idk if you’re home or not, but... do you got a good view of the western skyline??_

Ivy left Joker’s henchman babbling in the alley and sprinted out onto the street, swiveling around to the west. Her text was far more composed than her beating heart betrayed.

_I: I do. Why? Are you okay?_

The minutes dragged by without a response; Ivy’s eyes flicked between the blank screen and the blank sky.

And in the end, the sky lit up first. A dull orange glow appeared on the ragged edges of the clouds above Gotham, like paper catching fire, then spread rapidly through the sky as it turned from orange to yellow to brilliant white, brighter than the moon. The thunderclap of a huge explosion followed the light, so powerful the ground shook. Then the fire; she could only see the glow of the flames and the billowing black smoke.

Only the feeling of vibration in her hand jarred her out of her amazement.

_H: For you, sweetcheeks._

Then she sent a link to a news expose about the Hardington Steel Plant and the mass amounts of toxic waste they had been dumping into the river for years and years. Ivy smirked; it was a big factory, and would have required an alarming amount of explosives to level it. To do what Harley did? She’d used the munitions budget of a small country and set the skyline on fire. It wasn’t just a favor to Ivy, a kind gesture. It was a message, visible by all the city but addressed only to one.

There was a soft spot deep inside of Ivy, that had been vacant and dark for years. Harley was carving a home out of it. Ivy wanted to hug her.

Then again...she remembered Harley’s cocky little note on Cassano’s body.

_I: They’re not on my at the top of my target list, but not bad._

_H: Not bad? I blew those shady jerks sky high for you!_

_I: So not one bit of that explosion was for you?_

_H: ok ok. I love to make things go boom, sue me. you know me so well Red. miss ya!_

That was too final; Ivy’s smugness turned to panic. A little too quickly, she responded:

_I: Then come see me. I’ll take you on vacation._

She typed the words without thought but as she stared at them after the message sent, she realized how much she truly wanted what she had just offered. A week, two weeks, away from all of this? Her and Harley? Somewhere where her soft spot wasn’t so hidden and protected.

It was a strange, strange thought, one she couldn’t pass her own judgment on until she could read Harley’s response. If she laughed, it was a joke; if she rejected it, it was only a tease. If she accepted...they’d burn that bridge when they got to it.

She waited, waited, waited, for the little indicator that Harley was typing a reply, but nothing came. Harley hadn’t been caught, she was too slick for that, and she wasn’t with Joker if she was texting Ivy, so...what was the hold up?

Ivy caved, heart pounding.

_I: everything okay? are you okay?_

When her screen stayed black after this, she gritted her teeth and dashed back into the alley. Joker’s goon was still mumbling to himself, entirely unaware that she hadn’t been in the alley for the past ten minutes, or that an explosion had just rocked the buildings around them. 

“...and then he called the doctor and the doctor said -”

“Shut up,” Ivy commanded. “Listen to me. I don’t give a shit about Joker. Next time Harley pulls a job with him, or goes out on her own, you tell me, immediately. You have my contact number. Understood?”

He didn’t understand, but that didn’t matter, because she was layering the commands into his poisoned, intoxicated mind; he’d obey without question. “Good,” she said. “Leave me, and don’t breathe a word of this to anyone.”

Ivy texted Harley again on the way home, and again she received no answer. She kept the phone out of sight and out of mind the rest of the evening, distracting herself instead with the news coverage of the complete and utter destruction of the steel plant. They hadn’t caught or even identified the perpetrator, so naturally, the news ran wild with it. Ivy had to admit, it was a pretty good gift.

Only when she went to bed later that evening did she take another glance at the phone screen, mostly out of habit; she nearly dropped it when she saw there was a message waiting on the screen, a reply to what she had sent hours earlier.

_I: Did you keep those roses at least?_

_H: ‘course I did, Dandilioness_

And she attached a photo: a single dried rose, laying on a nightstand, next to her red and black flowers.

Ivy slept easy that night, even with the bone white full moon shining in through her window.

*

A few weeks ago, some fancy rich guy announced his bid for mayor. When asked what he planned to do about Joker’s latest claim to the city, the man had laughed and said “When I’m mayor, the Joker’s threat to the city will be about as potent as a pie to the face. A little startling at first, until you realize it’s all fluff and sugar and easily cleaned up.”

So now they were outside the schmuck’s high-rise apartment, readying a suspended scaffolding system, the kind that window washers use, to haul themselves up to his apartment. Or something.

Truth be told, Harley hadn’t been paying much attention since Ivy gave her that phone. Even now, as Joker went over his plan and all of its hilarious potential, Harley slipped the phone out of her pocket and scrolled through their conversation from a few days ago, from the night she snuck into the zoo.

Ivy had convinced her not to free all of the animals since they’d start eating each other, so Harley sent her a picture of a big fat ugly African Warthog, looking sad behind bars.

_I: The Bat put Joker away again?_

Harley had laughed so hard at that that the nearby hyenas joined in with her, but then she stopped when the guilt flashed. Mr. J wouldn’t like that - he hated being laughed at. She deleted both messages and didn’t send Ivy anything for a while. The next morning she woke up to a few more:

_I: I’m sorry, Harls. You know how I feel about him._

_I: You can do better. He doesn’t deserve you._

_I: I just want you to be happy._

_I: Just reply so I know you’re okay._

_H: im ok. we’re pulling a caper soon so we’ve been busy planning!_

It wasn’t the full truth - Mr J never included her in the planning process, she was too dumb - but what else could she say to her best friend, who was saying all this about her soulmate, her sun and stars? She and Joker were meant to be together and true love was never easy; Ivy cared about Harley, she really cared, but she didn’t understand.

Luckily, Ivy did understand when she overstepped, and pulled back. Which was a good thing because Harley liked talking to her when she was bored, which was all the time.

_I: So about that shipment of supplies for GCPD that went missing recently...?_

_H: didn’t have nothing to do with it, I swear!_

_I: Mhmm. Sure you didn’t._

_H: Really! in fact I was hopin’ you stole it for me._

_I: You are exceptionally clever and perhaps the most headstrong woman I’ve ever met. I figured you didn’t need any help stealing it._

A gloved palm slapped the phone out of her hands and she went rigid, snapping to attention and looking up at him.

“Harley, if you can’t pay attention to class then I’m going to have to confiscate that, and send you to detention,” he warned, with a toothy grin. “What did I just say?”

“You said ’Harley, if you can’t pay attention to class -”

“Not that. Did you miss the entirety of my instructions?” 

She jumped; if she had made him laugh she could have gotten out of trouble but he was serious this time. Whatever his idea of detention was, he would enjoy and she would hate. She couldn’t let that happen.

“I’m sorry, Puddin’. We go up, smash some stuff, scare the worms out of him, and make sure he’s loyal. Easy peasy. Right?”

He shrugged. “About as much as I can hope for, from your empty head. Rig’s ready, let’s go.”

Her, Joker, and four others hopped onto the scaffolding, crowding together. Harley lingered near the edge as Joker looked over the control panel, and when he wasn’t looking, she dashed away, grabbed her fallen cell phone, and checked it all over for cracks or scratches. She breathed a sigh of relief before tucking it away and jumping back onto the platform.

It was a slow journey up the side of the building, high into the cold sky. And winter in Gotham was no joke; the thin material of her jester suit did little to block out the wind, plus it was all cut up with gashes and runs she had yet to sew back together. Her teeth were chattering by floor ten, and Mr. Bigshot penthouse guy lived on the 21st floor. She wanted to smash his head in just for living so high up.

Except, he didn’t.

The scaffolding finally creaked to a stop outside the plate glass window of the twenty-first floor, and the six of them stared into an empty apartment.

Like, no furniture empty. Completely bare.

A couple of the men gave uncomfortable chuckles, like make it was a joke. “No fuckin’ way,” one of them breathed. “He was here yesterday! Just yesterday! Boss, you saw him! This was his apartment!”

In their reflections on the dark glass, Harley watched Joker’s face for the slightest hint of emotion or decision, anything to tell if he was going to laugh or cut the ropes holding up this scaffolding, and if she needed to grab hold of something. She was exceptional at reading him - she was the only one who truly knew him. It’s how she had survived so long.

Then her phone vibrated in her pocket and her thoughts went out the window.

_I: odd method of apartment hunting, Harls. Virtual tours are easier._

Even in the cold, her skin got hot, and she didn’t know if it was anger or something else, but she did know that if she didn’t love this phone so much, she would have thrown it. Just like if she didn’t love her life so much, she would have laughed out loud.

She did know that she adored Ivy.

She chewed the inside of her cheek to keep from giving anything away as she typed out, and deleted, and typed out, and deleted a reply, until at last she sent:

_H: c’mon, you told him? I really wanted to kill him! you’re no fun :(_

_I: all play and no work...leaves Harley in 2nd place. Need to be sharper, Harleen._

_H: I thought you said I was exceptionally clever and the most stubborn person you ever met?_

_I: You are. Now I’m saying that you are going to have to work to beat me._

An irrepressible smile finally spread over her face, and at that same moment, the plate glass window shattered with a crash, smashed open by the butt end of a shotgun swung like a baseball bat from Joker’s angry fists. Her smile vanished - the smile was merely a misstep, like a slip on ice, down to the instinctive stomach drop and heart skip before she regained her balance and scowled along with the rest of the men.

She let that edge slip into her fingers as she typed.

_H: ohh, he’s mad. he won’t have to work to beat to me_

The response was immediate.

_I: tell me that is just bad phrasing._

_H: he’ll probably give us the option of jumping or being thrown._

_I: I’d catch you._

_H: oh yeah? if I jumped right now?_

_I: I’ve been below you since the scaffolding went up. if he takes a step towards you...jump. I’m here. Trust me._

Her breath caught in her throat

She looked down. Twenty one floors down.

Back at Joker. He was ordering the four men, at gun point, off the scaffolding and into the empty apartment. Each body that stepped across the gap was a body less between her and the barrel of a gun, and she could not for the life of her remember if it was a gag gun or not. She’d never paid much attention before.

She looked down again. Down at the abyss, fog and darkness obscuring everything below. 

She trusted Ivy so much. Ivy would never hurt her.

She tucked the phone safely away again.

“Harley...” Joker singsonged. She was the last one left. He jerked the gun towards the apartment. “Let’s leave his neighbors a parting gift on his behalf, shall we? You can pay forward some of your detention.”

One last look down. One step into the unknown.

Then she crossed the gap into the apartment.

*

Ivy figured she had won. A few days had gone by in silence, deepening her satisfaction. Not only had she beaten Harley this round, she’d beaten Joker. Granted, that was something she could do blindfolded and cuffed to the cell bars in Blackgate, but there was a special kind of pride in outwitting the Clown Prince and Princess of Crime.

To celebrate, she’d broken into Gotham University’s new research lab and appropriated a number of hybridized plants. With a new blend of caffeine she had developed, she had the night in front of her to experiment - plans that immediately left her head when she stepped inside her apartment and found a huge oil painting of a white and blue flower leaning against the wall.

She recognized the petals of a lily, first, but the flower in the painting bore a striking resemblance to something else she was familiar with, a far more suggestive representation of female anatomy. Ivy half-laughed. A genuine Georgia O’Keeffe work, worth upwards of thirty million dollars, freshly stolen from an art museum somewhere.

There was a note taped to the top of the canvas.

_I didn’t realize that was what hokeef meant! Ivy, you naughty girl. _

Harley Quinn continued to surprise her.

She had her phone in her hand before she even realized it.

_I: Now I’m impressed._

_H: do you like it? I thought you would, it’s so pretty. and it even looks like a flower!_

She couldn’t help but laugh out loud.

*

It wasn’t until a week later that Ivy actually saw Harley.

Ivy strutted out of the front door of the bank into the silent night, not a hair out of place nor alarm tripped, with the bewitched security guard waving her goodbye. She hitched the bag over her shoulder and looked to her car...only to find Harley Quinn splayed over the hood, doing her best model impression, which seemed less convincing when a giant giddy smile lit up her face.

An unwelcome pang of something Ivy was not willing to name shocked through her. A moment of weakness. A dozen of Joker’s goons appearing out of the darkness around the car solved that. For a moment, Ivy fantasized about taking them all down, one by one, and riding off into the sunset with Harley beside her...but she knew, from the twinkle in Harley’s eye and the sway of her hips as she slid off the hood of the Aston Martin, that there were more complex games afoot.

And that suited her fine. 

“Nice car!” Harley called out to her as she approached.

“Want to take a ride?” Ivy offered. “You can drive.”

Harley clearly hadn’t thought past her first line, because she lit up again. “Wait, really?”

“Quinn,” came the gruff call from somewhere behind her, reminding her that Ivy had just robbed a bank two days before Joker and his goons were due to hit it. Harley straightened up.

“So how’d ya know, Dandilioness?”

“Know what?”

They were face to face now, staring each other down.

Harley’s lips twitched towards a smile. So did Ivy’s, as much as she tried to resist. For the sake of the performance, they tried to stay in character.

“That was _our_ target. In fact, we were scouting it tonight. Mr. J’s not pleased. He sent me and the boys to -”

Ivy stepped closer and Harley’s voice cut off, her eyes sparkling with anticipation the more the distance between them closed, the more she had to tilt her head up to keep eye contact.

“To what?” Ivy asked smoothly. “He expects you to carry them all home after I knock them out? Tough ask, even for someone as strong as you.”

Harley licked her lips, her breathing shallow. She loved this as much as Ivy did. It was enthralling in its simplicity, to stand opposed to one another and try not to smile, to tease instead of address anything deeper and more complex. Complex was for Pamela Isley and Harleen Quinzel, PhDs. Harley and Ivy were simple, instinctual, lust and bloodlust and risk and adrenaline. A perfect match.

“He sent us over here to teach you a lesson about infringin’ on someone else’s territory,” Harley said. An encouraging muttering went up from the men behind her, but neither Harley nor Ivy could care any less about them. They were worlds away.

Ivy moved so close so quickly, that Harley had to pull back to avoid their skin touching, which Ivy was secretly glad for: they were playing with matches atop a powder keg. Still, the thought didn’t soften her stance. 

“I assume he means the bank, but I understand how I could be wrong.”

Harley stared up at her, biting her tongue to avoid the full smile breaking over her face and giving the game away.

A shadow moved behind her, preceding his idiocy with “Okay that’s enough, it’s fuckin’ freezin’ out here -” and they were the last words he ever said, as Ivy lobbed a brilliant purple flower that released a cloud of toxins into their midst; the men dropped like stones.

Unfortunately, it broke the moment between her and Harley as well. Harley looked behind her with a plaintive little whine. “You were serious about me carrying all of them?”

“No,” Ivy said, stepping past Harley to her car. “In fact, I’d advise you to lay down among them and pretend to wake when they do, to avoid their single digit brain cells putting together the fact that you’re not only immune to the toxin, but let me go without a fight.”

“Who said I’m letting you go?”

Ivy shrugged. “If not, you’re welcome to come with me.”

She opened the passenger door and tossed the bag of cash on the floor. The nonchalance belied the longing in her heart that surged back now that their facade was finished. Please get in. Let’s just go.

But Harley stood her ground, as expected, holding Ivy with an unexpectedly soft gaze. “You know I can’t, Red.”

Harley stayed where Ivy left her as Ivy started up the car and whipped it around with a screeching of tires so that they were face to face at Ivy’s window. 

“Listen, Harls. One day, you’ll be able to. For good. I’ll be there when you can. Just like I’ll be here in the meantime...” Her smile widened into a smirk as she nodded at the money. “Just two steps ahead. Enjoy your night, Harley.”

And she roared off, leaving Harley Quinn an empty silhouette on the street behind her.

*

It ended up being kinda funny, like it always does. Two weeks ago, she had decided not to jump from the window of a skyrise penthouse apartment for him. It was a Batman-shit crazy test of loyalty that she had laid out for herself, and passed with flying colors. Don’t jump, prove your loyalty, prove your worth. Or jump into the unknown and never return.

So Harley had stayed. Showed him just how loyal she was. How worthy.

And then he kicked her out.

Well, not officially. 

_“So you see, my Harley...well, you’re the best of them. The most dangerous. And my loyal soldiers, they’re just...not up to snuff. Not nearly as dangerous as you. So we’re going to play a little game to sharpen them up. A most dangerous game worthy of my most dangerous girl.”_

Harley stomped her feet for warmth as she trudged up the street, dragging a shopping cart of all her worldly possessions - two plants, a baseball bat, throwing knives, a suitcase of dirty laundry, some stolen earrings, and twenty-seven dollars - behind her. The cart had a wonky wheel and couldn’t be pushed in a straight line, so she was going to need to find a car soon, or else she wasn’t getting very far.

And she needed to get far.

_“She gets a day’s head start. Whoever brings her back to me gets a million dollars. If the GCPD find her first, I’m turning you all into marionettes.”_

She caved as soon as she saw her first “for rent” sign above a corner store in the Bowery. It came furnished - with a hot plate, mini fridge, and mattress. She bought herself a month with the pair of diamond earrings - the sleazy old landlord who lived on the bottom floor had offered a year for the gold collar around her neck, but she turned him down without a second’s hesitation - and plopped down on the bare mattress in the center of the place.

*

She looked around at the patchy drywall, dented in places, then up the boarded-up windows. A real-fixer upper. She’d steal some furniture, find some wallpaper at wherever they sold wall paper - were there wallpaper stores? - and turn it into a real nice flophouse. Maybe get some roommates! A pet! _Two pets!_

Because Harley fucking Quinn was done with Mistah J. With JOKER. For real this time. It was one thing if she really vexed him and she got punished but thinking those goons would be good enough to bring her in? She was used to him sharpening knives on her because he needed her, needed her to keep him sharp and witty and blazing, but those dumb tools? She was better than that. Smarter, stronger, better. She could run this town.

This was her place now. Hers, and her pets, and her future roommates’. And her plants. 

Her plants, which were wilting a little bit, now that she looked at them. The black one was listing heavily, and the edges of the pretty red flowers were wrinkled and spotted dark in some places, but she knew she could give them a little water and bust out the wood in the windows to keep them alive. Harley smiled, planning it all, and reached out to brush a finger over the undamaged bit of the flower.

She wondered if Ivy could feel it, or if she were even trying. With a painful glance at her phone, screen still dark, she thought of Ivy’s last text, and how she hadn’t texted since. Had she seen Harley step into the penthouse with Joker instead of jumping over the edge? Harley trusted her with her life - did Ivy not think that? Could she even see that far? There weren’t any plants so high up - her head began to pound.

Much more simply, Harley could just call Ivy. They could start this taking over Gotham grand plan together.

And she would call. Soon. But...not yet.

At least not until she had a couch.

*

The blaring of her cell phone in the middle of the night reminded Ivy, for a moment, why she so loathed technology and the humans who used it to communicate. But as the sound pulled her out of unconsciousness, she realized only two people on this planet knew how to contact her this way, and neither one had called her in a week. She scrabbled for the phone on her bedside table, and answered it breathlessly.

“Harley?”

From the roughness of breath on the other side, she knew it wasn’t her; Harley breathed lighter and more controlled exhales, even at her most manic. 

“Uh, lady,” her inside man said, unsure of himself or what he was doing on the phone, “you told me to call when Quinn was on the move, and, well...”

“Spit it out.”

“Joker’s been playin’ a little game.”  
  



	10. Chapter 10

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm back! I'm sorry about such a long delay after having semi-regular updates. As I explained in a comment on the last chapter, I'm working on turning writing into a career so I occasionally need to set aside my personal fun projects. But I'm solidly back to work on this story and should be mostly regular and quick with it for the remaining chapters.
> 
> Also, in advance, there's a bit about Greek mythology in here; I know it's probably not completely correct and I'll have people calling me on it, but fudging it a bit for artistic purposes didn't bother me so hopefully you can let it slide.
> 
> Thanks everyone! <3

It went against everything she stood for, but she couldn’t deny loving the Aston Martin. Ninety miles an hour through the streets of Gotham, a commute time bested only by one other deranged denizen - Ivy smiled and pressed the pedal down harder.

Outside the warehouse Joker’s goon directed her to, Ivy found six low-level beat cops adrenaline-high on the chance to bring in Harley Quinn, based on an “anonymous tip.” In their rush, they had more or less collided with a dozen of Joker’s men outside the warehouse, ensnaring everyone in a nasty firefight that consumed all of their attention - so no one saw the low, dark car racing towards them until it was bearing down on them, accelerating.

“Batman!”

She scowled - he had nothing on her - and yanked the emergency brake and the steering wheel at the same time, swinging the car through a group of clowns. Blood and greasepaint splattered. That wasn’t exactly Batman’s MO.

Gunfire came from within the warehouse as well, forcing her to rush out of the car; she impaled two cops with a tree branch and pulled up roots from beneath the earth to ensnare three others. But her aim must not have been perfect, because as she headed into the warehouse, she caught the feeble death rattles of one of the officers as he called for backup over his radio.

“Poison Ivy’s here now too, with Quinn, and there’s something in the warehouse! Guns didn’t stop it!”

Great.

The flashes of gunfire in the dim, dank warehouse lit her way as she hurried down the towering aisles. It was concentrated in one corner; she kept to the shadows until she came up on a handful of GCPD units with their backs to the wall, firing blindly into the dark. Without breaking her stride, Ivy leapt up onto the nearest warehouse shelf, forty feet tall and stacked with bookcases, and climbed up into the rafters with the help of her vines. She could find Harley, get them both out with minimal effort -

Something dark and huge rushed out of the shadows at the police officers; they yelped and concentrated fire, but the thing only fell as it reached them, and only after dozens of rounds. They shined their flashlights down...at a man. Civilian clothing, muscles engorged, with the apparent pain tolerance and bullheadedness of a rhino.

“Harley Quinnnn!” came a slurred voice in the darkness.

With that, the officers raised their guns as two more huge men came running at them. Ivy watched intently now as the officers brought them down with a hail of gunfire, reading the classic signs of a brand new drug: Hallucinations, heightened pain tolerance, mania, aggression.

A dozen different plants could do that. Her interest piqued.

“Never seen anything like that,” one officer said, panting. “Took down three of us. I thought it was Quinn, at first, but then…”

“That was barely human. Let’s find Quinn and get out of here. Hopefully they took her out for us.”

Ivy didn’t blink. 

It took only a casual one-handed shove to send an avalanche of oak furniture down on top of the cops, crushing most and knocking the others back. None of the survivors heard her when she coiled a long vine around one of the rafters and lowered herself slowly behind them.

Had the officer outside not called for backup, Ivy would have taken her time, relishing her first fight in several weeks. As it was, she dispatched the officers as quickly and efficiently as possible, smashing in windpipes and breaking legs with venomous fury.

A touch more effort than she was used to, on normal jobs.

Then again, nothing that ever involved Harley Quinn could be called a normal job - it was far more important than that.

“Harley?” she called, into the wreckage and dust.

“Ive?” came Harley’s breathless laugh, thinly veiling her panic. On her hands and knees, she poked her head out from behind a huge pile of mattresses. “You’re shoppin’ too?”

Ivy picked up a flashlight dropped by one of the officers; Harley looked manic, pupils blown wide, a cut lip dripping blood down her chin and bruises forming over her body. Ivy lowered the beam of light, illuminating a half dozen bodies in a pile, and one bloody baseball bat sticking out of the top, like the sword in the stone.

Impressive.

“Told you I’d catch you, even if you didn’t jump right away,” Ivy said with a smirk. “Are you okay?”

“Dandy, Pammy,” Harley replied, dusting off her shoulders. “I coulda taken them, but I’ll never turn down a pretty lady helping me out. I was just doing some redecorating and those crazies jumped me, but the cops distracted them, so at least other people’s taxes are paying for something.”

Ivy illuminated them with the flashlight. They looked perfectly normal, if dead counted for normal. “Any idea what they were on?”

“Nope. I think Mr. J sent them after me.”

The blasé tone of voice, as if she were discussing the weather, chafed at the edges of Ivy’s patience. Joker and his games. Ivy’s intoxicated inside man had told her as much on the phone, something about a bounty and a preferably non-lethal hunt, but it was worse seeing it play out in person. Now, not only was he hurting her directly, he was hiring others to do it for him.

“He did,” Ivy said, through gritted teeth. “The cops too.”

“He - how do you know?”

“How else would they have known you were here?”

Ivy looked over the two bodies closest to her as Harley worked out the mental math on that one. To her surprise, she picked up a pulse in the neck of one of the men.

“Damn it, this one is still -

The man jolted up, screaming; Harley yelped and roundhouse kicked him, knocking him out again.

Ivy hardly blinked. “Interesting,” she breathed. “Unresponsive to pain, incoherent, but suggestible, if he’s hunting you down. No cars outside, so he walked here, meaning whatever he’s on is effective for a while, and it’s being distributed to several people. I want to run some tests on him.”

“Really? Tonight? You are such a nerd, Dr. Isley.”

“We have the same number of PhDs, Harley.”

“But I have like nine Interpol Red Notices,” Harley said proudly. “But c’mon, can’t you just search his pockets or something? Dragging around some dude’s body is going to be so boring.”

The search turned up a few bucks in spare change, some bullet casings, a matchbook...and, in a small pocket inside the breast of the jacket, a plastic baggie with two small ash-gray tablets inside. A label was affixed to the front:

_“Sample 39, test lab silver. Observer: JW.”_

Ivy’s whole body shivered and tensed with a wave of disbelieving fury. _Not here._

Harley noticed and crept forward, her voice losing its singsong nonchalance. “Ive? Red? Are you okay?”

The roots burst up through six feet of concrete foundation before she even realized it - responding to Ivy’s clenched fist, a bramble of deep tree roots wrapped around the body she had been examining and wrenched it back below the earth, disappearing into the dark beneath the rocks and rubble. Ivy was left staring at the hole where the man had lain.

“Uh, wow,” came Harley’s voice. “You’re really not okay.”

For the first time ever, the wail of police sirens in the distance heralded amnesty. When Ivy raised her eyes to meet Harley’s, the concern in her voice was nowhere to be seen on her face, tipped up toward the ceiling at the sound. Ivy had cultivated an impressive talent for compartmentalizing her feelings like carefully labeled jars in a greenhouse, a talent honed lately on Harley’s face and put to excellent use now with this latest round of news. She stilled her heart and rose to her feet, rolling her shoulders back and feeling ice in her veins once more.

“Come on. If I end up fighting GCPD, there won’t be a police force left. Let’s go.”

Harley whined. Ivy raised a brow.

“Harley. We need to run.”

Harley looked back towards her bat, still laying in the pile of bodies she had dropped, then back to Ivy. After a moment, she took Ivy’s offered hand, and suddenly, for a brief heartbeat of exhilaration as they ran out of the warehouse together, all was right in Ivy’s world.

*

“Stop here.”

Ivy raised her eyebrow at Harley’s command, looking at her out of the corner of her eye. They’d left the cops behind, but hadn’t reached a safehouse yet. Nonetheless, she obliged, pulling the car to the curb and turning off the purr of the engine.

“The garden?” she asked.

Harley looked out the passenger window in surprise, to a small, sad community vegetable patch on an empty lot. She actually meant the liquor store across the street, but Ivy was looking at the rows of veggies the same way Harley looked at puppies, so she nodded.

Because something was wrong with Ivy. Harley had seen it right before she did her super cool root trick. Ivy burned with barely controlled fury, smoldering even now, exhaling smoke and sulfur. And Ivy wasn’t supposed to burn. She didn’t. She was a goddess of graceful, fluid, cold rage, reserved and powerful. But burning? Forests weren’t supposed to burn. The air wasn’t supposed to be choked with black smoke. Her friend had come all this way to save her and she needed to set her right.

“The vegetable garden,” Harley repeated, with a quick nod. It would be perfect, with one small addition. “I’ll meet you in a sec, back in a jiffy.” 

She climbed out of the car before Ivy could ask, dashing across the street. “Not bailing on me again, are you?” Ivy called after her.

“On you, gorgeous? Wouldn’t dream of it!”

A derisive laugh sounded behind her as she threw her body through the front window of the liquor store.

She traipsed back a few minutes later, shaking glass out of her pigtails, with a bottle of red velvet cupcake wine held aloft. Slowing to a stop in the middle of the street, she watched Ivy strolling down the rows of the garden, her hands held out from her sides, moving slowly as she brushed over the plants, like some ethereal goddess of destruction, razing buildings and slaughtering armies - except the plants responded to her. The sad little plants tilted towards her with what she could only imagine were the same adoring smiles she felt on her face.

In the morning, the neighbors would delight in a full, bountiful garden of tomatoes and kale and snowpeas. Indeed, when Ivy finally turned back to see Harley watching her, there was a similar secret delight on her face. The fire was out. Ivy still had a switchblade-sharp edge in her eyes, but at least she had it under control. Step one, done.

Harley strode forward with the wine bottle. “To...escapin’,” she decided, testing the waters.

“Wine?” 

“ _Wine_ not?” 

Ivy didn’t laugh, which was about as devastating as the audience booing. Harley pouted. “You need a pick-me-up.”

Ivy eyed her warily, but nonetheless allowed the approach of bad decision making and it’s human embodiment. “We don’t have a corkscrew,” she pointed out.

Harley flicked a knife out of her thigh-high sock, impaled the cork, and popped it out. She offered the first sip to Ivy, who accepted the bottle and took a long pull and grimaced.

“Yet another post-breakup girls’ night, yet another bottle of terrible, cheap red wine.”

“It’s our _last_ post-breakup girls’ night,” Harley insisted. “I’m done with him. Got my own place and everything. After calling the cops on me?” She scoffed and drank from the wine bottle. “No chance I go back. Joker, clown prince of crime, working with the cops.”

“Sure. The final straw, after the violence and brutality and throwing you out of windows and into vats of acid and-”

“Some of that was my fault--”

“No,” Ivy snapped. “It wasn’t. None of it ever could be.”

Harley really didn’t want to argue this - she could see the embers beginning to glow again - so she passed the bottle wordlessly. As her arm extended between them, however, it caught the glow of the streetlight; illuminated beneath the light was a mess of bruises and scrapes mingled with all of her old scars. Ivy froze, staring. She didn’t take the wine; Harley held it out for several seconds before lowering it again. She backed out the light, finding space on a small bench nearby and curling around the bottle.

Ivy joined her on the bench, pulling the baggie out of her pocket and examining the pills again, this time with the label facing down. 

“Jason Woodrue.”

A pause. “Whosat?”

Handing the bag over, Ivy kept her focus on a tiny, curling tomato vine as she spoke. “JW, on the bag, is Jason Woodrue. Don’t ask me how I know. I just do.”

“Don’t turn into Nygma on me, Ive,” Harley whined. “One of him is already enough and you’re way too gorgeous for that. I don’t get it.”

Ivy snorted. “A friend of mine, Selina, said whatever is on the public end of this mess I’m cleaning up probably has something to do with drugs.” She tapped the pills in her hand. “I would imagine this is what she was talking about. It explains the criminal element in the little conspiracy.”

Harley’s throat ran dry. “Selina?” _No, no, no, Ivy was_ hers _\- her best friend, her -_

“I forget how new you are to the bowels of this city,” Ivy said with a small laugh. “You’ll meet her at some point, I’m sure. If you haven’t already.”

That didn’t answer Harley’s question, but Ivy had that same look in her eye that Mr. J got, a burning focus. It was a little scary. But much more pretty that Mr. J. In any case, Harley knew not to ask for more. Instead, she drew herself up, let the malice into her voice.

“So, Woodrue. Let’s kill him? Game over? Go for pizza?”

“Eventually. But it’s something I’m doing on my own.”

“What? Why?” The fear, which had purred at the mention of a Selina, growled more loudly at this. Ivy was the only reason she wasn’t all alone, she didn’t want to lose her too, have just the voices -

Ivy started and stopped several times, deep in thought, still not looking at Harley, before it finally spilled out. “I knew him a long time ago. He’s one reason I am the way that I am, in fact, the same way Joker is one reason you are the way that you are. He poisoned me. He was obsessed with connecting with the Green - he used me as a test subject, filling me with toxins and chemicals, and then left me for dead. I never thought I’d see him again...but I’ve also never forgotten what he did to me.”

There was more to the story - there always was. But a white-hot rage took over Harley’s vision. The wine bottle clinked against the bench as she suddenly sat up, forgetting about it.

“He hurt you?” she asked.

“Yes. And made my life what is now. So do I kill him or thank him?”

“It doesn’t matter, I’ll kill him for you.”

Slowly, torturously, painfully - suddenly, everything wasn’t so dizzying and loud inside her head, like a fog had lifted, and murder and mayhem no longer seemed important. His pain consumed all sense.

Ivy broke through it with her silky-smooth voice. “That’s not why I told you this, I just wanted you to understand how it feels when the tables are turned - that I understand how you feel about Joker, and I want you to know that how you feel about Woodrue is how I feel about him.”

For once, Harley was struck dumb. She bit her lip, and turned her attention to the bag of pills in her lap. She wanted to ask about Woodrue again, but Ivy beat her to the punch:

“Speaking of. Any chance that clown is involved in this?” Ivy asked.

“Nah,” Harley said, waving a hand and relieved to be off the topic of relationships. “We - he focuses on the big showy stuff. The main event. Small game doesn’t feed.”

Ivy raised a brow, patience thinning.

“Batman chases down terrorists, not drug dealers,” Harley explained quickly, between sips of wine.

Ivy snorted. “The two of them and their delusions of grandeur.”

“Why bother havin’ delusions if they aren’t grand?”

By the sharpness of her gaze, Ivy wanted to argue, Harley could tell, but she just gave a tired sigh. “Whatever you say, Dr. Quinzel.” 

She extended her long fingers for the bottle again, wrapping them around the neck and drinking deep. Harley abused the moment while Ivy’s attention wasn’t on her, her gaze moving with the wine down from Ivy’s ruby-red lips, to the twitch of her upturned jaw, along the muscles of her elegant neck and deep into her chest. Even with most of the bench between them, here in the quiet, cool privacy of this dark garden, Harley suddenly felt close to her, just as alive as all the plants around them. Like waking out of a dream to something better.

Like she said. Grand delusions. Ivy was so far away.

Harley’s blood beat in her veins. The line between lust and bloodlust was thin, and had gotten much blurrier since she had stopped being Dr. Quinzel. 

“You sure you don’t want to kill Woodrue together?” she asked, a little desperate to thicken that line.

“Doesn’t it feel nice to be independent from Joker?” Ivy asked, a little raggedly around a gulp of the drink. “He sent everyone after you; doesn’t it feel nice to beat down his goons and the cops and the burnouts he sends out like hunting dogs?”

Not until Ivy said it like that, did Harley realize it did. It did feel good. “I’m done with him,” she said again. “Done with his most dangerous games. I’ll show them. I’ll run this town.” Tears burned in the corners of her eyes, but she liked it, like the burn of alcohol.

“You will,” Ivy said, smiling softly. “Recognize your value. Come into your power. You’re worth so much more than you think.”

“So valuable. No one even realizes.”

A muscle in Ivy’s jaw twitched. She turned her gaze upon the garden instead - and then stiffened.

“Someone’s here.”

“Who? I can’t hear -”

“The plants.”

WIthout explaining, Ivy reached out and pulled Harley close with a protective arm around her shoulders. She swept a hand upward through the air and a row of tomato plants grew to tower over them and close around them, hiding them away from the rest of the world.

“Ive--”

“Shhh.” Ivy brushed her fingers over Harley’s lips, silencing her. “Police patrol. They don’t know we’re here. Let them pass.”

Somewhere outside, somewhere far away, the rumble of an engine made Harley understand, but she was too focused on the tingle in her lips where Ivy’s fingers had touched. It was part wine, part Ivy. She stayed perfectly still, her face inches from the elegant neck she had just admired, staring at Ivy’s surprisingly cool skin and surprisingly robust heartbeat pulsing in her neck. Then Harley relaxed, by degrees - sinking her weight against Ivy’s body, fingertips searching out a small stripe of skin on Ivy’s opposite hip. They hadn’t curled together like this since the last time Harley left, after the nightmare. They had been drunk then, too.

She sighed against Ivy’s skin, and watched the tiny beating pulse quicken. Pulled herself tighter against Ivy. Ivy’s fingers pressed her closer still, splayed across her bare hip, fingertips pressing just under the bone. Harley inhaled the scent of jasmine and the smell of the world after rain and felt her own blood hot in her skin. Lust and bloodlust, lust and bloodlust, lust and bloodlust, and wine, so much wine, she couldn’t separate it all anymore.

At some point, the police cruiser must have passed, because she became vaguely aware of the greenery receding, from everywhere except right in front of her. Harley stayed curled with Ivy - she didn’t even mind the _thunk_ that reached through her hazy mind to remind her that she’d dropped the wine bottle.

But Ivy? She heard everything about Ivy. Her heavy swallow, the sighed whisper of her shallow breath, the inhale she took every time she started to say something right before she closed her mouth again. Hell, Harley swore she could hear the flowers bursting into bloom around her.

And the voices were silent. She was alone in a forest. A moment of sanity.

“Harley?” Ivy asked.

“Shh,” Harley replied, reaching up to touch her lips, just like Ivy had before. She liked listening to the staccato in Ivy’s chest. So unusual, so human. She loved unusual and human.

“We can’t stay here,” Ivy said eventually, against Harley’s finger. Harley opened her eyes in a pout, to find Ivy watching her. Ivy drank in every inch of Harley’s face with half-lidded eyes, the sharp white edge of her teeth pulling every so slightly at blood-red lips. “Yours or mine?”

*

Ninety miles an hour through the streets of Gotham, a solid commute time up there with Batsy - Harley smiled as the thrust pressed her down into her seat. She loved this car.

They didn’t talk - they didn’t need to. The elevator in Ivy’s building was out, so they took to the stairs. With Pamela’s special serum in her veins, the stairs weren’t a problem for her, but still, her heart pounded, her breath coming shallow and quick, her anticipation rising with every step. She wanted to get there, wanted to get there now, but Ivy was intent on dragging out whatever this was with her usual easy grace. Harley dashed ahead of her, taking steps two at a time, Ivy something to watch.

She almost didn’t smell the smoke.

One floor down from Ivy’s penthouse, Ivy stopped short, her body tensing.

“Something’s wrong,” she said. 

“What?” Harley demanded.

Ivy hissed a stream of obscenities. “They started a fire,” she muttered, as the acrid smell of smoke and destruction hit Harley’s nose and formed a crystal clear picture out of the hazy thoughts that had only begun to take shape in her kaleidoscope mind. Usually, the smell was like a drug; now she just felt white-hot anger overtaking her.

“They - who?” she demanded, rising to Ivy’s level of fury. Instantly, they were side by side, dashing up the final steps and down Ivy’s hallway.

Ivy didn’t say anything down the length of the hallway. No smoke poured from under the door; whatever flames had been set, had recently burned out. When they reached Ivy’s door, they found a message scrawled across it.

_You’re lucky you weren’t here._

The two women stared at the door, motionless. Harley watched Ivy’s face out of the corner of her eye. Very contained, very pure, very scary rage. And Harley felt not an ounce of fear; in fact, she simply mirrored it in her friend. Whatever had been in the garden before...was gone now. This was all red.

AT last, Ivy took a deep breath. “Very intimidating,” she drawled, dripping with sarcasm.

“What’s this all about?” Harley asked.

“I’d imagine my murder spree annoyed the wrong people,” Ivy said. “This is a weak attempt at a threat.”

“Think they’re still in there?”

Her lips curled in the slightest of smiles. “If I’m as lucky as they say, then they would be.”

Harley smiled back at her, rolling her shoulders and popping her neck in preparation. “I don’t know about you, Red, but I’ve gotten pretty lucky tonight. Well, for the most part. Night’s not over.”

Together, they shoved through the door, into the disaster that had once been Ivy’s prized penthouse apartment: the walls were blackened with smoke fueled by her prized plants, which now lay in ashes in the center of the living room. The O’Keeffe was gone. The plate glass windows had been shattered, shards of glass mixed with the ash around the room, furniture had been torched if it was flammable and smashed to pieces if it was not, and red paint - or blood - had been flung against the walls. The bedrooms were similarly wrecked, with special consideration given to the pinboard of all her targets, now a pile of splinters and ashes.

Ivy stood in the middle of the mess, breathing deeply, her life in pieces around her. To maintain her fragile hold on her self control, she chewed at her lip until Harley worried she was going to bite through it. Worse still, she thought she might have seen angry tears in Ivy’s eyes.

At last, a deep breath.

“They killed my plants.”

Harley reached over and took Ivy’s hand, squeezing it gently. “I’m really sorry, Ive.”

It stilled the emotion threatening to spill over and Ivy released her lip from her teeth with a frustrated exhale. “All they had to do was leave the forests alone, source their chemicals sustainably. I probably would have even supported whatever drug or gas or toxin they’re going to use on Gotham But now? After this...”

The seething heat overcame her words, and that’s more than enough to get her point across. Harley nudged into her.

“Music to my ears. I’m with you all the way. Who’s first?”

“First is a place to sleep tonight.”

Harley brightened and tugged on Ivy’s hand. “I gotta brand new place.”

*

Ivy had been in this apartment for a while, turned it into a reasonably luxurious home base, but in her bones, she knew how to run. Fight or flight. Harley was always muttering about it - they knew both, intimately. 

With practiced detachment, she blocked out her fury and extricated a few days worth of clothes and personal items; when she emerged from the bedroom with a duffel slung over her shoulder, she found Harley on her hands and knees, covered in soot and cinders, sifting through the ashes of the plants. Ivy watched her for a second, admiring the furrow in her brow and the focus in her eyes, before she cleared her throat.

“What are you doing?” she asked.

Harley turned to her and opened her palm - she’d rescued a handful of still viable seeds, cuttings, and bulbs from the pile of dead plants in the center of the room. 

Ivy stared at the small green pile in her palm, her heart beating hard against her chest.

Maybe not all of humanity was worthless.

And maybe, as Harley had said, this night was not over.

*

As Harley skipped ahead of her to her new building, Ivy looked back wistfully at the Aston Martin parked at the curb.

“Think it’ll still be there in the morning?” she asked Harley, with a glance around the narrow, cracked streets and dark alleys of the Bowery.

“Parts of it!”

Harley excitedly led her up the stairs to her apartment, rambling on that “This is going to be so fun, I’ve missed you so much!” before throwing open an unlocked door into a...living space, technically speaking.

“Chez Harley!” she announced proudly. “Ours for the night...or however long you want,” she added, suggestive.

It would be called a studio in a nicer neighborhood, and a flophouse in lesser ones. The large room was mostly empty, aside from a shopping cart full of Harley’s things, a baseball bat leaning against the doorframe, and one huge mattress propped up off the wooden floor on milk crates, with a mountain of pillows and blankets piled on top.

“...comfortable,” Ivy appraised, after a pause.

“’course, it’s a work in progress, but at least it’s my own. I was stealin’ a couch when you found me earlier. So far, I’ve just been able to stuff things under my shirt and run, which is why there are so many pillows.”

Ivy raised a brow, trying to imagine how that worked with a wardrobe that ran a narrow spectrum from ragged crop-tops to red leather bralettes to skintight jester costumes.

She stalled out on the thought. She shouldn’t have, but she did. 

Whatever moral imperative that had governed her interactions with Harley for so long was quickly fading into obsolescence the longer she looked at her, starting over the bottle of wine in the park. She’d had the noble fantasy of herself as a trellis to Harley’s slow, wavering climb from the dirt -- steady and supportive and constant no matter what chaos Harley strayed into, or how many times she went back to Joker…

But that wasn’t Ivy. She wasn’t noble, or magnanimous. She wasn’t controlled by moral imperatives or a sense of duty or responsibility. She had one goal, and she would murder and steal and burn who got in her way; she lowered defenses with lust and seduction, killed her victims with sweetened, poisoned skin.

Harley was the exception. The only one she could kiss without killing. Now a prospect so tantalizing it was enveloping all else.

And tonight, under the heavy press of exhaustion, rage, and Harley’s intoxicating, overpowering presence feeling especially raw with her own heartbreak and chaos, Ivy was losing the strength to stay upright.

Morally or otherwise.

She closed her eyes, let herself luxuriate in the fantasy of Harley beneath her. Wanting, feeling, needing. Somehow, it felt like a relapse.

Harley grew uncomfortable in Ivy’s silence. “The place’ll be better after I get some time,” she assured her. “Way better than lame hideout I left him in. The lame hideout with the lame clowns and the lame gags. I hate him.”

She swung a foot at a pillow and sent it against the wall in an explosion of feathers. 

“Easy,” Ivy breathed. “Just breathe.”

“I _can’t_. Everything’s all messed up when it should be so simple. You don’t get it. I don’t know if I should be mad or sad or happy so I’m all of it at once. I’m just crazy. And I don’t want to think anymore.” Harley took a breath, then looked back at Ivy. Her anger smoldered still, but she was trying to calm it. “I’m happy you’re here, Pammy. I've needed someone, I don't like being alone. Too quiet.”

She bit her tongue and closed her eyes. Then stepped toward the bed. She knew exactly what she needed and exactly how to stop thinking.

It was slow. Invitingly slow. An attempt to lead. And Ivy followed, first with her eyes, rising along Harley’s legs from calf to thigh to waist - but she caught on the bruises. 

They were so much worse in this real light. She soured.

Harley needed to be touched. And Ivy wanted nothing more than to touch her, but not like this, not marked and scarred.

“Harley. Wait.”

The feeling of a relapse deepened into guilt as she stepped forward after Harley, whose blue eyes darkened. A colder, more responsible version of Ivy would have given into exhaustion and tumbled into bed, giving Harley the space to process some of her emotions and her new independence, but whatever was human in her wanted Harley. She wanted her bare and pressed against her, emotions and breakups and trauma be damned. And she didn’t care to keep resisting anymore.

But the bruises. She couldn’t do anything like this. 

Harley looked back at Ivy in surprise, and to answer her question, Ivy withdrew a jar of the pale pink wound salve. It would treat both of them, a physical relief for Harley’s injuries and a prop for Ivy’s show of being responsible and caring.

“You cleaned me out last time, so this is freshly made. It’ll sting more, but work better.”

Pouting, Harley reached out for the jar; Ivy held it back, motioning for Harley to turn.

“Jacket.”

She shrugged out of the leather, turning slowly to expose more bare, bruised skin beneath her shredded shirt, but she kept her round blue eyes trained on Ivy’s cautious approach.

“Relax, darling,” Ivy breathed.

Harley didn’t, not immediately. She was still shaking with anger and all the other emotions storming through her, and muscle memory runs deep. 

Under the single bare lightbulb of Harley’s new apartment, Ivy and Harley stood at the foot of her bed, and Ivy took her time in applying the salve to Harley’s cuts and bruises; never before had Ivy been so aware of the tenderness of skin beneath her hands. She soothed angry red cuts and scratches, smoothed the salve into the damaged skin with expert fingers. Gradually, she felt the tension ebb beneath her hands.

“You sure know how to treat me,” Harley said, with a satisfied sigh that twisted heat through Ivy’s stomach. She wanted more.

“Someone in your life has to. If it’s me, so be it. Still less than you deserve.”

At the gentle pressure of Ivy’s hand, Harley turned, allowing access to the front of her arms, her chest, her stomach. And her face. Ivy appraised it all for a moment: the bruises bloomed purple and green on Harley’s ivory skin, mottled and heart-shaped like the leaves of the ceropegia woodii - more commonly known as the string of hearts. The silver scars branched over the bruises like broadleaf veins. She gave the most care to Harley’s rosebud lips, split just below the corner, to avoid adding yet another faint scar there. Ivy brushed her fingers over all of it, with the same softness she gave the frailest of sprouting flowers.

In a garden, it all would have been beautiful. On Harley, it churned her stomach.

Gritting her teeth, Ivy reached out anyway, starting with Harley’s hands, battered across the knuckles. Harley kept her eyes on Ivy’s face as Ivy worked the lotion into each finger.

“I think it’s more than I deserve,” she said.

Ivy didn’t respond, working up Harley’s forearms. Her skin was warm. The room was warm. Everything was warm, alive, beating. Even Ivy herself.

Harley pressed on, surprising even herself with her sobriety. “A lot of bad things have happened since...him. I’ve done a lot of bad things. But some good things have happened...and I don’t think I deserve them.”

Ivy’s green eyes flicked up to meet hers, before returning to her work. She slid her hands up over Harley’s shoulders, to her collarbone.

“Good things like this?” Ivy breathed.

Harley swallowed. She had the look in her eyes that Ivy’s victims got, their lungs full of her pheromones, just before she broke them to her will. If Ivy didn’t know better, know that Harley was immune to everything Ivy gave off, she’d think that Harley was under her spell.

But she wasn’t - this was all Harley. All them. Nothing preternatural about it. They were two humans, entwined, and Ivy was falling as fast as Harley was.

“You’ve heard of Hades and Persephone, right?” Ivy asked. “Pretty girl, kidnapped to the underworld, the other gods try to rescue her, but by the time they break her out, it’s too late. She’s eaten the pomegranate seeds, condemning her to the darkness, at least part of the time.”

“Dumb broad.” Harley’s words, but not her voice. It came out as a whisper. She was breathless, transfixed.

“I prefer the older version of the story,” Ivy continued, cocking her head as danced her fingers across the dark blue blooms on Harley’s jaw. Harley closed her eyes and leaned into the touch. “In which Persephone isn’t kidnapped or dragged down and kept prisoner, powerless. She chooses to eat the seeds. Feels the juice run down her throat.”

She ran her fingers over Harley’s neck. Even under the faint touch, she could feel the blood rush.

“She changes from Kore, the maiden, to Persephone, bringer of destruction.”

Harley stepped closer, tilting her head up.

“She chooses to stay, to rule in the Underworld. She finds meaning and purpose in it, rather than being a victim of circumstance.”

Ivy’s gaze rose at last to Harley’s lips. But soft as everything else was, it startled her to find Harley’s teeth clamped down on her lower lip, so tightly that a seam of blood was growing across the pale pink.

“Harley -”

“I need to hit something.”

“What?” Ivy wrenched back; an icy deluge crashed over her.

Harley reached for her, but missed. “Everything’s so quiet and so _red._ ” Her fingers flexed into a fist and released as her breathing picked up, more manic, more frantic. She rocked back and forth as she stared at Ivy with mingled fury and want, like she was being torn apart by her conflicting desires. Fighting to get back to her and being wrenched away by the little voices in her head.

“It’s too quiet, I can’t think straight, I just -” She sucked in a steadying breath. “Your friend! Jared Wilson!”

Ivy’s stomach lurched. She’d finally found the downside to granting immunity to her effects; it had been so long since she’d tasted rejection. She’d forgotten the burn of it. And of course, it had to be tonight, of all nights. When he had returned to her life as well.

“Jason Woodrue,” she corrected Harley flatly.

“Woodrue. Whatever. Let’s find him, kill him. I need to hit something, it would feel so good.”

Ivy stepped away, closing up and shutting down even as Harley accelerated before her eyes. Her pupils were blown wide, her breath ragged, hands shaking as she pleaded with her big blue eyes.

“I have far better things I could do with my evening, love.”

Harley soured. “You’d be in if I said Joker instead.”

“Because killing him would save me the effort of making a new batch of that salve every week,” Ivy drawled, with a pointed glance down at Harley’s body. Which was a mistake, because the surge of heat she felt mixed poorly with the bitter sting of rejection. Harley was always talking about fight or flight - Ivy was getting to that point. She took a step back in an attempt to calm herself, but Harley reached out again, and this time, she caught a fistful of Ivy’s shirt.

“C’mon, it’s a girl’s night, remember! What better way than to kill a few useless men?”

The hope on her face flickered when Ivy didn’t relent. “There’s too much going on inside my head, Red. I can’t relax.”

Ivy softened. “Just breathe. I’ve got you.”

Harley gritted her teeth and pulled out of Ivy’s soft touch. “I’m not one of your _plants_ , Pamela, you don’t have to take care of me.”

“The fact that I had to pull you out from behind a stack of mattresses tonight says differently,” Ivy snapped. Forcing herself to cool down, she moved across the room, to Harley’s sad little potted flowers. And I’m well aware that you’re not one of my plants. The Green is beautiful, something that I’d give my life to protect, help it grow and flourish and live.” 

She brushed the tips of the flowers as she had touched Harley’s skin, brightening them and raising them up. “Humanity...is a blight. Except for you. Maybe.”

“What makes me the exception to your little rule, gorgeous?” Harley demanded, with a dark grin.She was on the edge, her blood pumping, and Ivy knew Harley would take a fight wherever she could find it, and if Ivy were the one to give it to her, so be it. 

Ivy eyed her warily. Despite her scattershot personality, Harley had an uncanny accuracy for weaknesses in walls and armor.

Harley drew closer. “Why’re ya always coming to save me, huh? I think I know.”

Harley was inside her, in all the worst ways. Ivy’s jaw tightened.

“Then enlighten me. Please. Use your PhD you’re so proud of an help me rectify that particular personality defect, _Dr. Quinzel_.”

The name dripped off her tongue with all the acid she could muster, and Harley drank in every drop with an unwavering smile. Not for the first time tonight, Ivy regretted the immunity she’d once given Harley…

“You’re always saving me because I’m all you hav e- it makes you feel good. A connection. And because you just might -”

Ivy cut her off, roughly. “Of course, because this feels so great. A wonderful waste of the evening when I could be pursuing more sane pleasures.”:

Harley wasn’t wrong. She just couldn’t let Harley sink in any deeper, be any more right.

Luckily, she’d struck back strongly enough; Harley snapped. “Then stop wasting your time with me! No one asked you!”

“Enjoy Arkham, then,” Ivy said icily, “Or Belle Reve, or whatever dark hole Joker or Batman throw you into next. Hell, enjoy the morgue, for all I care.”

“Fine!”

She knew exactly what Harley meant: everything was red. For all of Ivy’s storytelling, it had been Harley who had pulled her down into the chaos, where everything was red with lust and attraction and fire and anger. She needed to get out. Ivy made to storm past her, but Harley beat her to it; she whirled, seized a “Best Uncle Ever” coffee mug, and flung it at the wall. Ivy didn’t flinch, didn’t move. There was no fear - just a suffocating mix of want and manic anger. They’d been in the eye of the hurricane for one short moment, and now the storm was back.

  
  


_Self-sabotage._

_Systematic desensitization to the delineation of pain and pleasure._

Doctor Harleen Quinzel, the annoying, repressed little quack who lived in the shadowy recesses of Harley’s mind, would have watched that display, clicked her little pen, and notated quite a few terms for what had just happened.

_Self-destructive tendencies. Nervous system dysregulation. PTSD._

Unfortunately, despite her best efforts, she couldn’t take a bat to the head of Doctor Harleen Quinzel, so someone else would have to suffice.

So she silenced the old shrew, and stayed in the crazy, messed up, war zone of a mind she called home, where everything was still red. Everything was Red. Everything was her. And the line between fight or flight, always razor thin, had been blotted out.

Now, she was doing both. Running from a fight, looking for a fight. Anything to exorcise the storms inside. She needed to hit something. Instead, she walked down the street, fists clenched.

In a divine intervention that may have gotten a saner woman to believe in God, she heard the rumble of a motorcycle on the street beside her; the rider was slowing, drawing closer. On instinct, Harley dropped her shoulders and folded into herself, luring the rider in...when the motorcycle came close, she lashed out with a punch and knocked the man onto the ground. In a flash, she leapt onto the motorcycle and roared off.

Even thinner than the line between fight and flight was the line between lust and bloodlust. When Ivy spoke to her, touched her, when she felt her heart pound under Ivy’s hands, she could feel the heat and she didn’t know what to do with it. These feelings never came with just tenderness and pleasure - she had waited for the pain and never felt it. So her body, afraid and unsteady even if her mind wasn’t, stayed tensed. Waiting for the inevitable. Adrenaline and desire all mixed up beneath the umbrella of fear. She didn’t know what to do, except run and fight. 

The cold air on her skin didn’t ease it, the thrum of the powerful engine beneath her didn’t ease it.

She needed to take this out on someone. Needed to feel bones break. 

And she knew just who it would be.

It just might take a few days to track him down. It was okay. She could be patient, just this once.


End file.
